This paper assumes that judicial decisions are political decisions, and that this is a condition for fully understanding them. Therefore, the work here is guided by a specific theoretical approach that is not usual in the understanding of judicialization of politics in Brazil: the theory of hegemony. This theory had its starting point in the work of Antonio Gramsci and has found important contemporary developments in the works of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Thus, this paper aims to analyze important recent decisions of the Brazilian Judiciary as political decisions in the following sense: in a particular context, a specific social group is understood as antagonized by another group and strategically seeks to establish, by judicial mechanisms, a new political hegemony that materializes their private demands as a general interest. Relying on three case studies that deal with controversial points of the interference of Judiciary in politics – judicial activism, the judicialization of morality and the judicial regulation of electoral competition – this research aims to operationalize this analytical framework and to propose some theoretical and methodological guidelines for empirical research regarding the relationship between politics and justice in Brazil.
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