Activism, populism and the judicialization of politics: the difficult task of understanding judicial decision-making behavior

The article aims to explore some theories of judicial decision-making behavior used in the fields of legal, political, economic and neuroscience, highlighting the importance of understanding how judges actually act, deconstructing the blind belief that, due to the position they occupy, they will always act in the public interest. These theoretical contributions help to differentiate the occurrence of mere judicialization from the judicialization of politics, activism and judicial populism, as well as to identify the use of the weighting of values considered discretionally by the judge, in a strategic or rhetorical way, in order to cover up personal reasons. From the interdisciplinary analysis, it is concluded that understanding how people act and react strategically to changes in their environments and in their incentive structures during decision making is fundamental to complement the law as a regulation of behavior, avoiding or minimizing illegal decisions, activists and populists.