Justiça consensual e efetividade do Poder Judiciário: a eficácia do projeto vagão da conciliação do Tribunal de Justiça do Maranhão

Abstract

The study traces the evolution of the “waves of access to justice” to show that, although article 3 of the 2015 Code of Civil Procedure elevates conciliation and mediation to essential

techniques, their effectiveness remains only partial. It explains that frivolous litigation—low- merit claims filed without regard to the social costs—and the habitual litigation pursued by

large economic conglomerates or even the State itself overload the courts, generating delay and discredit. This scenario amounts to a procedural “tragedy of the commons”: the low cost of filing suits encourages the outsourcing of conflicts, while society still equates access to justice with direct resort to the courts, thereby undervaluing consensual settlement. At the institutional level, the study reviews the National Council of Justice’s policy initiatives — “Justice in Numbers,” the “National Judicial Goals,” “Justice 4.0,” and itinerant projects such as the Maranhão Court of Justice’s “Conciliation Wagon” — which aim to streamline judicial services and bring consensual methods to underserved populations. Although these programs display inclusive potential, their success depends both on inter-agency cooperation and on a cultural shift that embraces self-composition as the primary avenue for dispute resolution. The justification for this study lies in the need to understand the limits and potentialities of the mechanisms provided by the legal system for consensual dispute resolution. The research is defined as qualitative-quantitative, employs a typological method, and adopts a deductive approach that begins with generic premises drawn from the legal framework and Brazil’s institutional reality, subsequently analyzing concrete cases and empirical data.