The application of the principle of the best interest of the child by the Superior Court of Justice from 2001 to 2018

Abstract

This paper examines the set of 20 judgments of the Superior Court of Justice which, from 2001 to February 2018, cite the principle of the best interests of the child as decision support, according to a survey on the Court's website. The scope of the work was to verify if there is uniformity in the criterion used by the ministers when applying the principle, as well as to evaluate if the use met a real need of legal reasoning or if it was a simple rhetorical argument of reinforcement, and, therefore, it is unnecessary. In only four of the 20 judgments examined there was the necessity or adequacy of the principle. The conclusion is that it is necessary to establish a clear procedure for the technical application of the principle, at the risk of the hermeneutic wear of the principle, which has the effect of emptying it of its force. The research is basically jurisprudential and of qualitative analysis, once the judgments have been examined and evaluated according to their reasoning logic.