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[PDF]Economics and Justice: Concepts and Empirical Evidence* Armando ...
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Page 1. Economics and Justice: Concepts and Empirical Evidence* Armando Castelar
Pinheiro 1 *Originally in Portuguese. Translation by Prof. Peter Harris. ...
www.ifb.com.br/english/documentos/ castelarIngles17_10.pdf

"Another option is to make part of the decision process automatic, with the best known
proposal along these lines being that known as `binding abridgement'. By means of this
mechanism, lower courts would have to follow the decision of upper courts when judging
similar cases. It is estimated that around 60% of all cases which come before the judiciary
have the public sector as one of the parties and involve a very small number of disputed
subjects for example, in 2000 around 80,000 suits came before the Federal Supreme Court
(STF), involving little more than 100 subjects. In principle, `binding abridgement' would
render the analysis of the great majority of these suits more agile, making the judiciary more
predictable, discouraging parties from bringing cases before the courts merely to take
advantage of their inefficiency, and freeing judges to concentrate on the remaining cases. By
means of these alternatives it would be possible to achieve more with the same resources."

For this case, I think this should be the proper translation. In legalese, though, "súmula vinculante" should be translated as "stare decisis", or "binding decision" or "binding precedent", According to Noronha's "Legal Dictionary", supported by Merriam Webster's Dictionary of Law.


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Note added at 2003-01-13 19:18:07 (GMT)
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The above expression is equivalent to SUMULA VINCULANTE, not only SUMULA.

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Note added at 2003-01-13 19:22:30 (GMT)
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The expression \"súmula vinculante\" is not used literally in your text, but analogically to the binding effect of the upper court decisions on the lower courts, when judging similar cases.