DEFERENCE AND JUDICIAL PRACTICE: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE JUDICIAL REVIEW OF AGENERSA

This article is a research product developed by students of Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV) Law School in Rio de Janeiro during the second semester of 2017. The main goal of the study was to verify the level of judicial deference of the Court of Justice of the State of Rio de Janeiro (TJRJ) to the decisions taken by AGENERSA, the Independent Regulatory Commission of Energy and Basic Sanitation of the same state. Three different parameters were used: (i) the deference by the discourse; (ii) the deference by the result; and (iii) the deference by the extent of the review. These variables were conjugated to evaluate some trends of the Court in reviewing the decisions of regulatory agencies.