Opinion piece - this text advocates for a position: the publicity of judicial decisions is only fulfilled when the average citizen, without specialized help, can independently access the decision. It is not a neutral report.
The Federal Supreme Court - STF - is the only one, among the 92 courts in the country, that does not publish in the National Electronic Justice Diary - DJEN, the system presented by the National Council of Justice - CNJ as the sole search point for judicial decisions.Exclusion is written in three resolutions from the CNJ itself, signed by three Ministers from the STF between 2010 and 2022. The decision that originated this investigation, issued on August 1st, 2026, does not appear there: a search by the name of one of the parties returned 44 communications from four courts, none from the STF.
There is no secrecy or charging: the STF maintains its own digital diary, free and open, at digital.stf.jus.br, where the decision has been published since August 3rd. What does not exist is a way to access it - and the found fault is specific and reproducible: in the three actual processes tested, the "Search by Origin Number" returned a blank page when given the official punctuated number; removing dots and hyphens, it correctly located the three appeals. The field does not inform this requirement. And the diary's address is cataloged as "Institutional Publication", absent from the "Processes" section, where citizens actually land. This article argues that there is a failure to comply with the publicity required by Article 93, Section IX, of the Constitution, because publicity is an obligation of result: if it only reaches those who already knew how to look for it, it's a privilege, not publicity.
First step: the national diary where the STF does not exist
Brazil has 92 courts, according to the CNJ's own count: four Superior Courts (Superior Court of Justice, Superior Labor Court, Superior Electoral Court, and Superior Military Court), 6 Federal Regional Courts, 27 State Courts of Justice, 24 Regional Labor Courts, 27 Regional Electoral Courts, 3 State Military Courts of Justice, and the STF itself. When searched in DJEN, the STF returns the same server error that would return a made-up abbreviation with no corresponding court - the same absence confirmed by the system's "National" list, above. For researchers, the STF and a non-existent court are, there, the same thing: nothing.
This is not a maintenance issue: it's written, and has been written three times, by three different Ministers—all in the presidency of the CNJ, a position reserved in the Constitution for a Minister from the STF. Resolution No. 121/2010, which opened public access to procedural data on the internet, stipulates in Article 13 that it applies to bodies listed under Article 92 of the Constitution "starting from sub-item I-A"—that is, starting with the CNJ, excluding sub-item I, which is the STF. Resolution No. 234/2016, which created the National Diary itself, is clear: "the publications provided for in this Resolution do not cover the Supreme Federal Court." Resolution No. 455/2022, which revoked and replaced the previous one, repeats the exception—but opens a door: the STF "may integrate" into the system. The exceptions did not arise solely from presidential signatures. Resolution No. 121 resulted from a group led by Counselor Walter Nunes and public consultation; Resolution No. 234 had rapporteur counseling from Counselor Luiz Cláudio Allemand, working groups, and consultations; and Resolution No. 455, reported by the Presidency, was unanimously approved at the 349th Ordinary Session. The criticism, therefore, should be directed towards the CNJ's institutional and collegial decision—not three individual signatures. Four years have passed since then, and the door remains open: no one has crossed it.
And it's not that the National Diary is just any parallel system for administrative notes, dispensable without prejudice. Article 12 of the same Resolution n.º 455, of 2022, is clear: "The National Diary 'replaces the current electronic justice diaries maintained by the organs of the Judiciary Power'." The order extends to the entire Judiciary Power; a single organ is exempt from it in writing, and it's the STF.
There is an objection to be made here, and it needs to be addressed before moving forward: the CNJ does not command the STF. It's the opposite - the CNJ oversees the administrative actions of other judicial bodies, but its own decisions can be reviewed by the STF, which is superior to it. A council does not give orders to those who judge its acts, and the premise is accurate.
The problem lies in what usually follows this statement, and it doesn't hold up. From "the CNJ cannot compel" no one extracts "therefore, the STF must stay out", because they are different things: not being subject to order is not being prohibited from adhering. A court that cannot be compelled can still adhere by its own deliberation, by convention, by cooperation agreement - as it does, indeed, in dozens of other technical arrangements with bodies that do not give it any orders.
And there is internal evidence, written in the norm itself: Article 27 of Resolution No. 455 of 2022, after repeating the exception, adds that the STF "may integrate" into the Services Portal, the National Diary, and Electronic Domicile. The text that supposedly proves constitutional impossibility states, in writing, that adherence is possible. There is no legal barrier - there is an open door, with the STF inside, deciding not to cross it.
It's also worth noting what the Constitution does not say: it does not deal with electronic diary, process system, or technological unification - none of these existed when it was written. Its silence is not an order; it's a space for choice. And the choice here has been made - three times in writing, and not by the Constitution.
The important question then arises, and it's not about the CNJ: does the STF itself, by its own deliberation, fulfill the duty of publicity that the Constitution imposes on it in a way that serves those who need the information, or just in a way that serves form?
Second step: The STF does publish, yes, and for free.
The Supreme Court (STF) maintains its own Electronic Justice Diary.Text: https://digital.stf.jus.br/publico/publicacoes— free, public, searchable, with no login requirement, password, or digital certificate. It includes the rapporteur, type of decision, parties, lawyers, date of disclosure, publication date, and a button to download the document in PDF format. The decision that initiated this investigation appears there in seconds: disclosed on August 1, 2026, and published on August 3, 2026. Everything is correct and free, with no access requirements at all.
Law No. 11,419 of 2006, which digitalized judicial proceedings, allows exactly that: each court can maintain its own electronic journal, and publication in it replaces any other official means. The Civil Procedure Code mandates the publication of decisions in the Electronic Justice Journal; the STF (Supreme Federal Court) publishes in its own. Formally, therefore, the law is complied with—and it must be said so explicitly, because the temptation to shout "secrecy" before a restricted court is great, and here it would simply be false.
What is indeed reserved—to lawyers, parties, and the Public Ministry, through digital certificate—are the petitions and documents that the parties themselves attach to the case file. This restriction is not arbitrary on the part of the court: it is written in Law No. 11,419 of 2006, in Article 11, Section 6. Those who consider this insufficient have a law to discuss—not a practice to denounce.
Third level: broken search, incorrect classification menu, and the address that doesn't appear.
The STF (Supreme Federal Court) portal offers, on its case query screen, a "Search by Origin Number" — the natural search for anyone holding a case that has been escalated from a lower instance, which is precisely the case with any extraordinary appeal. The defect is more specific than the initial measurement suggested: the search correctly locates the case when the number is typed only with digits, but returns an entirely blank page when the same number is entered in the official, punctuated format defined by CNJ (National Justice Council) Resolution No. 65 of 2008 — the format in which the number appears in any decision, petition, or court system. The field does not alert that the punctuation needs to be removed, and the address generated by the search — visible in the browser bar and reproduced in the image credit below — leads to the number as typed, including periods and hyphens. Verification for this article confirmed the pattern in three actual extraordinary appeals from three different origin courts: without punctuation, each case appeared; punctuated, the page returned blank in all three. A fabricated, punctuated number receives the same silence. The search works, therefore—but only for those who know, independently, that they need to disobey the official format of the number they are typing.
And the official newspaper of the STF - where everything is correct and free - does not share the same address as the tribunal's portal: the portal is located at portal.stf.jus.br; the newspaper, at digital.stf.jus.br.
You must be precise here, because accuracy matters: yes, there is a path through the menu. On the STF portal, clicking on "Publications" (the fifth item in the horizontal menu to the right of "Jurisprudence") opens a list that includes a link to the "Electronic Justice Diary (DJe)" within the "Institutional Publications" submenu. It's just two clicks, and if you already know the newspaper exists and that it is cataloged as a publication, you'll easily find it.
The issue is not the hiding place, but the classification and absence: the newspaper is archived under "Institutional Publications," between the Distribution Minutes, the Supreme Court Bookshop, and the Quarterly Journal of Jurisprudence - thus treated as library material rather than part of the process for those following a case. And on the "Cases" section of the portal, where this user actually enters, the newspaper simply does not exist: a check done on August 5, 2026, found zero visible mentions of the word "Newspaper" and zero links to it on that page, and the same is true for the portal's footer.
The address is not hidden, therefore - it is cataloged in the wrong place and absent from the only correct location. Nothing on the screen where the interested party naturally lands when following a case indicates that the full text of the decision they just viewed with a label is freely available just two clicks away - assuming they know to look for it on the shelf of institutional publications.
The effect of this is more severe than it seems: free access only for those who already know how to navigate the labyrinth is merely symbolic. Those who give up halfway through have not stopped paying; they've paid in other ways - with their time, or by hiring someone who knows the system. The practical outcome is indistinguishable from a charge: information reaches those with resources, but it does not reach those without. The difference is that a charge appears on a bill, while this does not appear anywhere - not even in court statistics, which record a published page but do not register the citizen who gave up looking for it.
And what about Google, which finds everything?
A reasonable objection: and what about Google? The average citizen, faced with an STF decision, would likely type the process number or the parties' names into the search engine and find the content in seconds. Indeed, Google indexes the content of the STF portal, and the Journal of Justice appears in the results. JusBrasil and other private portals also index and organize jurisprudence, often in a more user-friendly way than official systems. The citizen does not need to know that the Journal is at digital.stf.jus.br; Google takes them there.
This objection is true, and it needs to be granted - but granting it does not absolve the state: it accuses it. The publicization of acts by the judiciary is a constitutional duty of the very Power itself. When the only effective way for a citizen to find an official decision is through a commercial search engine or a private jurisprudence portal, what is happening is de facto outsourcing of accountability. The State deposits information in some corner of its digital territory and leaves it to an American company and private jurisprudence portals to do the organization and search work that it itself should be doing.
The citizen who finds the decision through Google is not being served by the STF's duty of publicization - they are being served by a private company's indexing policy. If tomorrow Google disindexes the STF portal, or if the algorithm changes, or if the private portal starts charging for access, the citizen returns to the labyrinth. Official publicization cannot depend on the commercial goodwill of third parties, because what is left when it depends is the courtesy of a private company - which can be revoked at any time, without the citizen having anywhere to complain.
Publicization is an obligation of result, not a repository
What is at stake has a name in the common language of international law:open justice— open justice, the requirement that the exercise of judicial power be visible to those who are not parties to the proceedings. It is not transparency as administrative courtesy; it is the condition for judgment to be criticized, commented on, studied, and, if appropriate, contested.
The Constitution does not treat the publicity of judicial acts as a repository that merely exists in some corner of the state. Article 93, Section IX, requires that judicial proceedings be public because publicity is the instrument by which those who exercise power are accountable to their titular — the people. Article 5, Sections XXXIII and XXXIV, sub-item "b", guarantees any person the right to receive information from public bodies and to obtain a certificate. And Section LX of the same article is even more specific: only law, not resolution or regulation, can restrict this publicity, and only when privacy or social interest require it.
It is important to clarify what is not being stated here: that the Supreme Court (STF) violates legislation regulating publication. The investigation showed that it complies with it, and this has already been said clearly. What is being argued is something different. The thesis is that Article 93, Section IX, demands a result, an effectively public judgment, and not just the act of depositing the text in the correct file. Those who disagree have a reasonable argument: the obligation to publish is fulfilled by publishing, and the rest is criticism of design. The divergence lies in what the word "public" requires from those who judge. This thesis is not an uncontested consequence of the constitutional text; it is a reading submitted to the reader.
Even the Resolution No. 121, of 2010, from the National Justice Council (CNJ) — the same resolution whose Article 13 excludes the STF — describes the reason in its own grounds: publicity exists as a guarantee of "the accountability of judicial activity." Fragmented accountability in two newspapers, one not in the national index and hosted at another address, classified as "Institutional Publication" and not linked on the case page (with the "Search by Origin Number" broken), is inferior accountability. And no norm, at any time, authorized that the STF's be worse than those of other courts in the country.
Who signs, and with what mandate
It is worth looking at the design from a distance because up close it appears normal. A body was created in 2004 to standardize the Brazilian Judiciary — to unify systems, uniformize procedures, and end the patchwork quilt — and the Constitution determined that it be presided over by a Minister of the STF: the only house that this body does not reach, because it is the one that judges its acts. It is not conspiracy; it is design — in which no one has any incentive to mess with, and four years without this power being exercised are the first indication of what the design produces.
Add up what these three norms are, as far as form: they are not laws — they did not go through a draft, parliamentary commission, sanction or veto — but rather administrative resolutions, voted and approved by the Plenary of the CNJ in sessions held in 2010, 2016, and 2022. The decision-making process is collegial — which in itself is not the problem: magistracy and regulatory bodies are not elected in any democracy, and this does not make them illegitimate. The problem is more specific: the presidency of the CNJ, which signs the acts, is always held by a Minister of the STF, and the CNJ decides on the publicity of decisions from the house it presides over. These are internal administrative acts, of national reach, that decided for sixteen years where the decision of the apex body of Brazilian justice would be visible — and where it would not be. Those who disagree have, formally, to whom to appeal: Article 102, Section I, sub-item "r" of the Constitution gives the STF itself competence to judge actions against the CNJ — the final word on a norm that excepts the STF belongs to the STF. And the CNJ, contrary to what one might suppose, is not an external control body: it integrates the Judiciary (Article 92 of the Constitution) and exercises internal administrative and disciplinary control, not external oversight.
There are those who propose to look at such arrangements through a more suspicious lens (note 2), and the question it suggests does not require diagnosing anyone: the thesis of interest is not about individuals, but about the rule — where the norm dispenses someone from accountability, the position tends, over time, to attract and form those who prefer not to be accountable. What an arrangement selects, over sixteen years, when it dispenses from control precisely the top?
Power that excepts itself, and whose final word on its own exception lies with itself, without any external instance that can review this choice, concentrates too much control in one hand, even within a democratic state of right.
What does the guardian of advertising cost?
The most obvious objection to all this has not yet been addressed: could the CNJ simply not have enough money to do the same for the STF?Annual Budget Law 2026It answers, and the answer is no. The authorized dotation for the entire CNJ - personnel, charges, operation, and supervision of the entire judiciary in the country - amounts to R$ 609.1 million. The STF alone, the only tribunal left out of the unified system, has a dotation of R$ 1.098.9 million: almost double the entire organ that supervises the rest.
The CNJ is not a poor body trying to do much with little: its budget amounts to 0.81% of everything the Federal Judiciary spends, and 0.0175% of the General Union Budget excluding debt service, according to the very Department of Budget Monitoring of the CNJ (comparison with other bodies and programs of the Union is in note 1 below).
In terms of personnel, the picture is equally modest for the size of the task it fulfills: 367 permanent servers on duty - 275 stable and 92 still in the probationary stage - as per the April 2026 survey by the CNJ's Personnel Management Secretariat. It's not an army of bureaucrats: it's a small team running the system mandated to apply to all tribunals in the country, except one.
Budgetary data shows the institutional scope of the CNJ and STF, but does not allow for calculating the marginal cost of integration, which was not obtained. Therefore, it does not prove that adherence would be cheap nor allows attributing its absence to a lack of resources; it merely makes this hypothesis verifiable and worthy of a technical response. This reason, if it exists, remains without a public answer.
A comparison point.
The Supreme Court of the United States publishes free of charge, on its own website, the pleadings in cases it hears — including petitions from litigants representing themselves (pro se).pro sePrinted and then digitized documents. The rule is on the official page of the electronic protocol system, CM/ECF —Case Management/Electronic Case Filesmanagement of cases and electronic files — in operation since 2017: an electronically delivered document becomes public,free of charge(no charge). In lower U.S. instances, another system is in place, PACER, which charges per page and has been the target of a campaign for years to end the charging. Result: in the United States, the Supreme Court is the most open instance, not an exception. In Brazil, it's the opposite — the STF (Supreme Federal Court) is the only court exempted from the national diary, in writing.
Free access does not automatically follow from the existence of an electronic diary: the U.S. system charges per page when it decides to do so, even though it's computerized and rich. It's a choice, not a technical consequence — and in this, the STF made a good choice; there's still work to be done elsewhere.
What would be easy to fix
Nothing that was found requires a constitutional reform or even a new law. It calls for four actions: the STF to exercise the power already recognized by Res. n.º 455, of 2022; the tribunal's portal to notify, on the case tracking screen, that a published decision is free in its own diary; while this isn't happening, move the link from "Institutional Publications" to the cases page, where a citizen following a case is actually located; and someone correct the search code "By Number in Origin" so it removes dots and hyphens before consulting the server — the same number that, without punctuation, the search already correctly finds.
Advertising that relies on citizens already knowing where to look is not advertising but a privilege for those who already know.
Transparency note
This text did not consult the STF before publication: it is an opinion piece, not a report, and readers are entitled to know this when weighing what they read. It is hereby noted that any factual corrections, clarifications, or responses from the STF, CNJ, or anyone feeling aggrieved will be published in this same space and with the same prominence through the right of reply channel of Insubornável.
Also noted is what was not verified: it is unknown if there is an internal study, deliberation, or project for adherence to the National Diary since 2022 — a question that a request under the Access to Information Law would answer, and which was not made in time for this publication. It is unknown how many people use the broken search function per day, nor how many give up. The average remuneration of CNJ's staff could not be determined with the precision this article requires for publication, as official remuneration panels require monthly consultation and the time for this verification did not allow for a comprehensive survey. It is unknown what the STF's institutional position is on the thesis that advertising should be effective, not just formal. None of this was measured, nor is it affirmed here. What was measured is described: which screens, on which dates, with which numbers, and the captures are above for anyone who wants to recreate the path and verify if the result has changed.
Notes
Note 1 — CNJ's budget in perspective.Among actions of similar magnitude in the Union Budget, CNJ appears at the top: its R$ 609.1 million surpasses, individually, the New PAC action for sewage networks (R$ 379.04 million), Criança Feliz (R$ 308.84 million), expansion and consolidation of protected areas (R$ 244.12 million), titling of quilombola territories (R$ 114.04 million), water supply to communities without access (R$ 39.85 million), and the removal of children and adolescents from child labor (R$ 28.60 million) — summed, these six priorities do not reach twice CNJ's budget. Compared to entire agencies, the distance is repeated: the Brazilian Space Agency — AEB — has R$ 143.89 million, and the National Center for Advanced Electronic Technology — CEITEC, Latin America's only chip factory, R$ 118.4 million; the two combined do not reach half of CNJ's budget. However, the comparison is not univocal: when compared to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (R$ 15.20 billion), the goal to expand infant vaccination coverage (R$ 10.34 billion), or the portion of Minha Casa Minha Vida paid by the Union Budget (R$ 7.67 billion), CNJ is small. It is not the country's largest expenditure; it is significant among those of its magnitude. None of this measures the cost of integrating STF into the system, which was not verified.
Note 2 — the lens of ponerology.The text provided is incomplete, so here is the translation based on what was given: "The"Political ponologyText: — from GreekI am unable to provide a translation as the text provided is incomplete ("ponerós"). Please supply the full text for accurate translation.The bad — is the study, proposed by Polish psychiatrist Andrzej Łobaczewski, who lived under Stalinism, of how power structures produce despotism and state violence. It needs to be said honestly that this is not established science: the work has no empirical validation or peer-reviewed literature, critics classify it as pseudoscience, and it circulates more as a political essay than as psychiatry. This article uses it as a question, never as proof, and does not apply it to any specific individual. The full reference is in the following section.
To explore: all sources, with notes
Norms cited
- Constitution of the Federal Republic of Brazil of 1988According to Articles 5, paragraph 60, XXXIII and XXXIV, "b"; 92; 93, IX; and 102, I, "r" of the Brazilian Constitution, the foundation of all is why judicial advertising is a citizen's guarantee, why only law can restrict it, and why the Supreme Court itself is responsible for judging actions against the National Council of Justice.
- Law No. 11,419, of December 19, 2006This law informatizes the judicial process. It authorizes each court to maintain its own electronic journal (Article 4) and restricts access to digitalized petitions for lawyers, parties, and the Public Ministry (Article 11, § 6).
- Law No. 13,105, of March 16, 2015 — Civil Procedure CodeAccording to Article 205, paragraph 3, it is mandatory to publish the provisions of sentences and the summaries of judgments in the Electronic Justice Journal.
- Resolution No. 121, of October 5, 2010, by the National Council of JusticeThis resolution opened public access to procedural data on the internet, excluding the Supreme Federal Court from its scope (Article 13), signed by Minister Cezar Peluso.
- Resolution No. 234, of July 13, 2016, by the National Council of JusticeCreated the National Electronic Justice Diary and expressly excluded the Supreme Federal Court (Article 22). Signed by Minister Ricardo Lewandowski.
- Resolution No. 455, of April 27, 2022, from the National Justice CouncilReplaced the previous one; repeats the exception but authorizes the Supreme Federal Court to adhere by its own will (Article 27). Signed by Minister Luiz Fux.
- Law No. 15,346, of January 14, 2026Annual Budget Law for 2026. Sets the authorized allocation of each organ of the Union's Judiciary, including the National Justice Council and the Supreme Federal Court, used in this article to compare the cost of the two.
- Resolution No. 65, of December 16, 2008, from the National Justice CouncilEstablishes the National Unique Process Numbering Code and defines the Módulo 97 Base 10 algorithm for the check digit - the punctuated form that the "Search by Number in Origin" feature on the Supreme Federal Court's portal does not process correctly.
Official sources consulted
- Procedural Communications — public interface of the National Electronic Justice DiaryMaintained by the National Council of Justice. This is where any search for any court in the country works — except for the Supreme Federal Court.
- Electronic Justice Diary of the Supreme Federal CourtFree, no registration required — the place where the Court's decisions are actually published.
- Portal of the Supreme Federal CourtWhere procedural queries are made, and where a search "By Origin Number" returns an empty page; where the Electronic Justice Diary is under "Institutional Publications" (5th item in the horizontal menu), not on the processes page.
- Initial Allocation of Union's Judiciary Organs — Portal of CNJBudget Tracking Department of CNJ; "Budget 2026" spreadsheet used to compare the Council's and Supreme's allocations.
- General Information — Magistrates and Servants, Annex IV-a of Resolution CNJ nº 102 — CNJ PortalNumber of permanent positions in the Council's personnel roster as of April 2026.
- Citizen Budget — Annual Budget Law 2026, Federal Budget Secretariat / Ministry of Planning and BudgetSource of values used to compare the Council's budget with other priorities: science and technology, child vaccination, popular housing, sanitation, and early childhood.
- Brazilian Space Agency — Transparency PortalUpdated 2026 budget used to compare CNJ allocation with that of the country's entire space agency.
- National Center for Advanced Electronic Technology S.A. — CEITEC — Transparency PortalUpdated 2026 budget used to compare CNJ allocation with that of the only chip factory in Latin America.
Through the Lens of Ponerology
- Łobaczewski, Andrzej.Ponerology: Psychopaths in PowerSão Paulo: Vide Editorial, 1st ed. 2014, 2nd ed. 2025. Preface by Olavo de Carvalho. Original title:Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes(1984). A work of great circulation in Brazil; cited in the article as a hypothesis and a lens for reading, never as an established science — it has no empirical validation or peer-reviewed literature, and critics classify it as pseudoscience, but its influence on Brazilian public debate is undeniable. The article does not use it to assert anything about a particular person.
For Comparison
- Supreme Court of the United States — official electronic protocol pageIt is where it is written that the filed documents remain in the public record of the Court without charge, and that paper petitions from litigants without an attorney are digitized and made available in the same manner.
- United States Supreme Court — search in the case docketPublic, open consultation where these pieces are kept.
- PACER — United States Federal Judicial Document Access SystemIt charges per page viewed; a target of campaigns to end the charge for years. It is proof that free access is a choice, not an automatic consequence of digitizing the process.
Produced with Claude Opus 5 (Anthropic, AI), directed and responsible by Benito Juarez.
Style note — The Unyielding writes with the reverential capital letter of classical Portuguese and extends it to all office titles preceded by a name: the Engineer, the Anthropologist, the Shoe Shine — at the same level as the Governor.