DECISIONAL MISALIGNMENT AND SOCIAL PROTECTION IN THE FEDERAL SPECIAL COURTS: BINDING PRECEDENTS AND EVIDENCE FROM THE FEDERAL COURTS OF SANTA CATARINA

Abstract

This article investigates decisional misalignment in federal social security and non-contributory benefit litigation originating in Santa Catarina, Brazil. It combines descriptive DataJud analysis, a thematic documentary audit and institutional legal research. The retrospective extraction covers procedural events in 2025 and comprises 70,067 case-by-court-level units, including 35,920 comparable confirmation, partial confirmation or setting-aside outcomes and 628 explicitly coded annulments. The audit adds 24 judgments, equally divided between ordinary appellate adjudication and Special Court review panels, individually linked to DataJud and selected across four precedent families. Findings include institutional disagreement over arduous working conditions, reconsideration to apply IRDR 12, correction of a first-instance ruling under a repetitive precedent, and incidental citations. Affirmance and reversal therefore cannot be equated with compliance and non-compliance. Scholarly and institutional sources situate attempts to access alternative procedural routes as a possible response to perceived insufficient protection, without attributing this motivation to all litigants. The article advocates stronger links between Federal Special Courts, regional courts, uniformization bodies and the Superior Court of Justice, together with a narrowly designed interlocutory safeguard appeal, appropriate use of qualified precedents and assessment of reason-giving. The proposal preserves judicial independence and rejects reversal rates as promotion criteria. Selection and inference limitations are specified in the methodology.