‎Brazil News

President of the STJ, minister Maria Thereza de Assis Moura / Credit: Emerson Leal/STJ

The president of the Superior Court of Justice (STJ), minister Maria Thereza de Assis Moura, highlighted, in the closing session of the judicial year at the Special Court, this Tuesday (19/12), the record number of new cases received by the Court . According to her, the STJ received, until Monday (18/12), around 458 thousand new cases, 10% more than the record registered last year, of 405 thousand cases. Faced with the situation, the minister defended the regulation of the relevance filter.

 

The relevance filter, established by Constitutional Amendment (EC) 125/2022, is a mechanism that introduces relevance as a requirement for the admission of special appeals to the STJ. Enacted in July 2022, the change still needs regulation to be applied.

 

“We are carrying out countless activities and programs, but without regulation we will not be able, I believe, to reduce our collection to the extent we need,” she stated. According to the president of the STJ, in 2023 the Court judged 426.5 thousand cases.

 

 

However, despite what Moura classified as a “Herculean effort”, the court continues to have a high number of cases pending. “We currently have more than 318 thousand cases being processed in the various court units,” said Moura.

 

According to her, due to the excess of cases, the Court failed to meet part of its goals. “With regard to Goal 1, which aims to monitor whether we judge more than we receive, around 9 thousand cases remained pending. As for Goal 2, which deals with the judgment of cases distributed until 2019, there are around 5,500 cases left in the collection”, she explained.

 

“This demonstrates and reaffirms the need for the STJ to regulate EC 125/2022, which established the argument of relevance of the federal issue to reduce the special appeal”, concluded the judge.

 

At the end of last year, the STJ delivered to the president of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG) a draft law with a regulatory proposal. The draft introduces a provision in the Civil Procedure Code (CPC) detailing how the “relevance filter” will work. However, the topic has not yet been considered in Congress.