The Brasilian electoral justice

Introduction: electoral justice can be called the basis of a modern system of democratic elections based on the principles of protecting the rights and freedoms of citizens and equal access for all to the electoral process on the terms of transparency, impartiality, and justice. Purpose: the purpose of the paper is to consider electoral justice in Brazil and analyze its significance for the political and electoral competition in the country during the elections. Methods: when working on the paper, the author studied a large volume of scientific and legal materials, some of which were little known to the Russian scientific community or introduced into the scientific circulation for the first time. The methodological framework for the research is a complex of general scientific and special legal methods, in particular, the system method, analysis, synthesis, and generalization and forecasting. The formal legal method was also used to analyze the normative legal acts, as well as a comparative approach when analyzing the foreign and Russian sources. The historical and legal method allowed us to consider the origin, formation, and development of electoral law in chronological order, taking into account the modern features of Brazil. Results: the peculiarities of the modern Brazilian electoral justice system are that such a system, created as a necessary element of democratic elections, eventually became the basis for the democratic consolidation of Brazil, influencing not only the making and application of independent decisions but also the rule-making in the electoral process. This is due, firstly, to the fact that the Brazilian electoral justice is independent neither of the regulatory body that carries out electoral justice, nor of the party interests, nor of the interests of the majority in the matters of protecting society exercising its electoral right. Secondly, the electoral justice system has quite broad powers in terms of implementing the rule-making process on the issues of law enforcement of the constitutional regulations on the electoral process. Conclusions: such rule-making contributes to the creation of conditions for the effective judicial protection and political competition, and the institution of electoral justice itself objectively shows its efficiency and is recommended for the implementation in the Russian Federation in the form of an autonomous system of electoral courts, including the federal electoral court, the electoral courts of the subjects of the federation, the municipal electoral courts and the corps of electoral judges of polling stations.