O Procedimento Recursal e as Garantias Fundamentais do Processo: a Colegialidade no Julgamento da Apelação

Abstract

The present study aims to analyze the collegial judgment of appeals in the second instance Courts, from the viewpoint of the theoretical reasons underlying the collegiality and the fundamental guarantees of the parties in the civil litigation. After the exposure of the purposes for which, in the abstract, the procedural law establishes a judicial collegiate body for judging appeals (i) strengthening of judicial cognition, (ii) ensuring the independence of judges and (iii) restrainting individual will , it is made a detailed analysis of the successive steps that comprise the ordinary appellate procedure, according to the disciplines provided by federal laws and regimental rules, as the distribution of appeals, the role of the rapporteur, the figure of the reviewer, the agenda of the Court, the oral argument, the collegiate deliberation, the elaboration of the decision s text and the parties s notice about the content of the decision, in order to identify the points where the formal scheme of the appellate procedure reveals a dissonance with the assumptions by which should be guided. The study is guided by a democratic conception of civil procedural law, founded on maximum effectiveness of the fundamental guarantees of the parties in civil litigation as proclaimed by the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988.