Dissenting Votes on the Brazilian Supreme Court

We examine dissent on the Brazilian Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) using a novel dataset of 2.23 million individual votes in over 420,000 collegiate decisions issued between 1988 and 2023. After discussing the particularities of the Court’s processes and the individual minister characteristics and institutional features potentially influencing incentives to dissent, we examine the effects of several different elements on likelihood of individual dissenting votes. Our findings suggest that jurisdiction type, collegiate body, legal complexity, ideology, case salience and the relationship between case reporter and dissenter all play non-trivial roles. We also find that exposure to the legal academy in common law jurisdictions is correlated with an increased propensity to dissent and that two-thirds of the Court’s dissenting votes are attributable to a single member, Minister Marco Aurélio. Finally, we discuss the more nuanced impacts of several additional factors including televised hearings, virtual sessions, and gender.