The main objective of the present research is to describe the fiscal federalism of the public debt
starting from the Federal Constitution of 1988 and to investigate the role of the Supreme Court
in the inter-federative conflicts involving the public debt of the member states, having as case
studies the Writ of Mandamus (MS) nº 34.023 and the Original Civil Action (ACO) nº 3363.
Thus, the dissertation chapters are organized through the following specific objectives: to
analyze the constitutional design of public debt fiscal federalism in the 1988 Constitution, with
an emphasis on exposing the federal functions and relations performed by the Union, Senate
and subnational government; understand the process of reversing cooperative and solidary
fiscal federalism through the economic policy promoted by the Union, with constitutional
changes that affected the distribution of resources to States; to analyze how the dynamics of
public debt federalism pressure the government relations in Brazil, causing successive fiscal
judicial conflicts between the Union and States; based on case studies, to evaluate how the
decisions of the Supreme Court in the inter-federative conflicts changed the fiscal federalism
of public debt. The main result of the research exposes the fiscal federalism of public debt as
the constitutional design of the normative complex of legal and political relations of public
indebtedness of subnational entities, plus the primordial performance of autonomous entities
and institutions in the authoritative political-legal process of operations, normative regulation,
definition of limits and imposition of control. This complex intertwining generates friction and
disagreements between the Union, endowed with a threefold function - manager, guarantor,
creditor -, and the States submitted to an infinity of federal legislative and infra-legal rules to
have access to credit operations. In this conflicting inter-federative financial relationship, the
STF acted to promote the federative balance and reduce the differences between political
entities. The STF did not encourage the Union to grant privileges to States or to grant new debt
forgiveness, but rather, it intermediated the composition of a political solution between central
and subnational governments, like an authentic Federation Court, participating in the dynamics
of fiscal federalism of public debt.
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