General Repercussion: Access to justice and reasonable term on the jurisdictional provision

Abstract

The Access to justice, inserted on the 5th article, incise XXXV of the Federal Constitution, is a fundamental right that guarantees to all citizens not only the admission in court, but also the termination of the process with the satisfied pretension in a reasonable period of time. The reasonable duration of the process is another fundamental right expressed on the same article 5th, introduced by the Constitutional Amendment n. 45/2004. This article guarantees that the processes are fast and, more than that, efficient because of the fact that it guarantees justice to both parties in a shorter period of time. As such, the process should be fair (it must guarantee to both parties the correct solution of the litigious matter) and fast because a late solution for the conflict may be useless. It was also the Constitutional Amendment n. 45 the one responsible for instituting the general repercussion as a requirement for the extraordinary appeal (art. 102, §3 of the Federal Constitution) – it requires the demonstration that the subject in discussion exceeds the subject interests of the cause. The main goal is to diminish the number of processes that reaches the Supreme Federal Court so that it can, as a Supreme Organism, deal with causes of real national interest and thus create quality precedents which could be used by other Organisms of inferior hierarchy. Under the constitutional aspect, it is nothing else than the result of a truly right of access to justice and the reasonable duration of process, considering that it aims to guarantee fair and fast solutions to the processes that do not require any other postponing appeals and provide a better quality examination to the ones that still need appreciation by the Supreme Organism. Keywords: access to justice; reasonable duration of process; procedure celerity; general repercussion