Audiências públicas como instrumento de legitimação da jurisdição constitucional

Abstract

The present work analyses how public hearings can present themselves as a mean of judicial review legitimation, despite their non-binding nature. In order to achieve that, the present work elaborates, grounded on the relations between democracy, Constitution, articipation,legitimacy, process and technique, a critique to the majority rule, which fragilities might be overcome by the civil society through the public sphere, from the point of view of the discursive theory of Jürgen Habermas. This work presents the public hearings as a channel through which the influence of the public sphere reaches the political or legal systems. This influence channel into the judicial review, maintaining or encouraging the civil society's protagonism, is able, in one hand, to prevent the brazilian Supreme Court to perform a paternalist role, derivated of its preeminece on the present times, and, on the other hand,supplying the lack of adversarial speech on the abstract constitucional review. Understanding adversarial speech as a legitimating principle of a process conclusion, as it assures the participation of those concerned, the work concludes that the public hearings, as mean of participation of the concerned people on a judicial review conclusion, legitimates it's role