A modulação dos efeitos das decisões e a mudança do entendimento jurisprudencial no Direito Tributário

Abstract

This paper is intended to analyze the doctrine of the prospective overruling os the Courts decisions, focused on the principle of the legal certainty. We understand that the Brazilian legal system only has protection mechanisms in cases that there is change of understanding at the administrative or legislative level. However, there is not a way to avoid the changes of understanding in the judiciary level, what may lead to a legal instability in the behavior of citizens. That is because citizens base their behavior according to the positions of the pacified jurisprudence. But, if such positions change abruptly, there is no instrument to facilitate the people have their rights preserved, since the new decision, as a rule, has retroactive effect. In this scenario, we believe that the modulation of the effects of decisions might be used for such cases, so that there is the prospect of the effects of the judgment for all acts performed by citizens, especially in the taxation, preserving, the legal certainty which shall be given by the Government