The Supreme Court between law and scientific technocracy: the asbestos case

Abstract

The article discusses the problem of increasing the use of scientific grounds to the detriment of the legal ones in the decisions of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) as a practice of the technocratic models. In order to do so, it analyzes a complex conflict of constitutional jurisdiction over the regulation of the use of asbestos within the Brazilian federal structure that allows the identification of the limits and risks of this new posture increasingly common in Brazilian courts. This is the case of asbestos, a conflict involving Federal Law n. 9.095/95, which regulates the issue of the use of asbestos in Brazil and state laws that have prohibited the use of the mineral. The analysis will be made from ADI n. 3937/SP, which took ten years to be decided by the STF.

Keywords

• tecnocracia científica
• conflito federativo
• caso do amianto