JUDICIAL ABUSE OF REGULATORY POWER
Abuse; Judiciary; regulation; proportionality; free enterprise.
This dissertation aims to conceptualize and substantiate the unlawful practice of judicial regulatory abuse, understood as the issuance of court decisions with regulatory effects that, by violating the principle of proportionality, impose undue restrictions on free enterprise or other fundamental rights. It adopts a theoretical and doctrinal approach, developing conceptual and legal criteria to identify such abuse, without resorting to empirical methods or case-by-case analysis. The study traces the evolution of economic regulation, contrasts competing theoretical paradigms of how markets function, and examines the contemporary phenomenon of regulation through litigation, by which the judiciary assumes normative functions functionally equivalent to those of regulatory agencies. It argues that, especially after the Economic Freedom Law, the tests of suitability, necessity, and strict proportionality must guide any judicial intervention with regulatory effects. It concludes that recognizing and controlling judicial regulatory abuse is essential to preserve the legitimacy of state intervention in the economic order within constitutional limits, offering a conceptual contribution capable of guiding future analyses and practice in Brazilian law.