Journal of Law and Criminal Justice

Confidence in Justice and Experience with Court: Evidence from Brazil
Joelson Oliveira Sampaio, Rodrigo De Losso da Silveira Bueno, Luciana Gross Cunha

Abstract
Although there is a literature that relates the determinants of confidence in justice and use of judicial, there is a gap on the causal relationship between these two variables. The purpose of this paper is to examine the causal relationship between confidence in justice and use of judicial in Brazil. To address this issue, we construct measures of the extent to which the main newspapers report government corruption in their front page during the period 2010-2013 distributed by the states: Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Distrito Federal. By examining how confidence in justice affects propensity to use the judicial, we use instrumental variable approach: IV Probit. We use the news of corruption (front page coverage of corruption) as instrumental variable. Confidence in justice is the variable instrumentalized. Our results are based on four surveys conducted along 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. We created the Brazilian Confidence in Justice Index (BCJI) as a validity argument for our confidence measure. The results show that confidence in justice has a positive impact on use of judicial. People who have higher levels of confidence in justice have a greater propensity to use the judicial. We also find that there is a positive relationship between confidence in justice and use of judicial for some demographic variables such as income, education, age and race.

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