It completed one year with the adhesion of the majority of Brazilian courts, but faces criticism regarding limitations and lack of definition of concepts to standardize the measure.
The action of the (National Council of Justice), announced on December 4, 2023, aims to encourage courts across the country to be less stilted both in legal paperwork and in communication with the general public.
According to , of the courts subordinate to the CNJ, only the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) did not join. When questioned, the court did not say how it has handled the issue.
This means that the TJs (Court of Justice), TREs (Regional Electoral Courts), TRTs (Regional Labor Courts) and three higher courts have joined the initiative: (Superior Court of Justice), TST (Superior Labor Court) and STM (Superior Labor Court) Superior Military Court), among others. The (Federal Supreme Court) does not appear on the list because it is not subordinate to the CNJ.
There are advances, such as — excerpts of documents that contain a summary of what was decided. But, for critics, the pact disregards dimensions that go beyond simplifying vocabulary.
Among the commitments of the courts that have joined are to eliminate, when possible, excessively formal terms, encourage the use of summarized versions of votes in trial sessions and provide explanations of the impacts of decisions “on the lives of each person and Brazilian society”.
“What happened with law — and still happens, but I think we’ve been improving a lot — is that you transform language into an instrument of power that excludes people who don’t have that key to knowledge from the debate”, says minister Luís Roberto Barroso, president of the STF and CNJ.
According to him, the definition of “simple language” used by the council does not come from some “technical-scientific analysis”, but from “a more empirical thing about the other person’s ability to understand what you are saying”.
The menu standardization manual is among the initiatives linked to this first year of the pact. The idea is for the courts to summarize the main points of the decisions, facilitating understanding and providing, in an accessible way, references to the legislation and precedents cited. At the end, the manual gives examples based on menu formats already in use.
Also as a result of the pact in its first year, the CNJ granted, in a ceremony on October 16th, the “Simple Language Seal”, intended to recognize projects and efforts in the area. It was handed over to 47 courts and the CJF (Federal Justice Council).
The (São Paulo Court of Justice) was one of the 23 state courts awarded with the initiative. According to Paula Navarro, judge assisting the court’s president, much of what the court does in this area was started before the pact. She cites as an example “Juridiquês Não Tem Vez”, a project that brings together podcast and videos to explain legal expressions and topics in accessible language.
The court also adopted a method in favor of brevity and simplification of ceremonies. The TJ is also in the middle of a transition to a new electronic process processing system, Eproc. This migration is done “thinking about some decisions, letters, that also contain easier images or words”, says Navarro.
Heloisa Fischer, professor and speaker on simple language in public information, reinforces the idea that many of the actions had already been established “from the bottom up” by the courts.
She sees a limitation in the way the CNJ deals with the matter. Many of the materials related to the pact talk about vocabulary problems — that is, they emphasize the need to exchange complicated terms for more direct ones. But simple language, says Fischer, also encompasses elements of phrasal construction and design that facilitate the reader’s absorption of information.
The pact even mentions the subject when emphasizing the importance of brevity. Fischer states that he does not see aspects of visual organization and sentence structure included.
Much of this, she says, has to do with ongoing changes in the field itself: there is, today, an ABNT (Brazilian Association of Technical Standards) standard that establishes guidelines for documents in plain language. The publication is from 2024 and, therefore, could not have been included in the pact from the beginning.
Ivy Farias, lawyer and course organizer on simple language for legal careers, states the lack of an exact definition of what “simple language” would be.
“I was very worried that every court would do whatever they wanted and say that was plain language,” she says. “For it was said and done.”
The lawyer highlights that, although the ABNT standard is recent, it could serve as a guide for new actions, combating this still present uncertainty.
Farias also recalls the bill whose proposal is to establish the National Simple Language Policy in public administration, approved in the Chamber of Deputies in December 2023 and currently in .
“I think that, with the approval of the law, with the Executive moving on this, they will end up bringing this definition into the picture”, says the lawyer. “With this, I think it will no longer be as airborne as it is. There will be an action plan, date, binding, transparency.”
