The judiciary and the greek myth of Kronos: the judicialization of the consensual means for conflict solution and the monopoly of access to justice

Abstract

In the Greek mythology, the god Kronos swallowed his children after birth, in order not to be dethroned and thus to perpetuate himself in power. The Brazilian State, when represented by the Judiciary, in seeking ways to provide access to qualified justice, has been overusing extrajudicial forms – which at community level have provided differentiated approaches to conflict – but such overuse has transformed these extrajudicial decisions into rules of traditional jurisdiction. The present study aims at analyzing the perspective of the Judiciary at implementing alternatives to adjudicated decisions, by means of editing norms that keep it as a centralizing entity, through self-determined means outlined under its order. The research is based on the bibliographical method and contains an examination of the doctrine and legislation connected to the theme, as well as the hypothetical-deductive approach and monographic procedure method. In this understanding, one wonders: from the myth of the Greek god Kronos, is it possible to identify an excess – by the Judiciary – in subtracting consensual ways of resolving conflicts in order to retain the monopoly of jurisdiction? The incessant intervention of the Brazilian Judiciary is incontestable in covering all the questions related to the delineation of the self-composition of conflicts, infecting them with the perils of a decadent system, hence separating the citizen from the access to justice.