The relevance of the federal issue in the special appeal and Kafka’s Castle

Abstract

This article aims to test the hypothesis that the need to demonstrate the relevance of the federal issue in the special appeal is an argumentative barrier that prevents access to the Superior Court of Justice. In this sense, it was verified from the work “The Castle” by Franz Kafka that, just as the protagonist of the book tries in every way to face an insurmountable argumentative labyrinth to access the castle, the citizen-appellants also need a high argumentative load for their appeal to be admitted and to access the Superior Court of Justice, but they encounter an authoritarian system of domination. The methodological procedure used was the legal-theoretical one, since it was critically demonstrated that the need to argue the relevance of the special appeal is related to the issues of authoritarianism present in the work of Franz Kafka. It was possible to demonstrate that relevance is yet another obstacle that violates the constitutional right to appeal and becomes incompatible with the democratic legitimacy of decisions.