Judicial function in constitutional domains: a theoretical framework for assessing judicial reasoning in Constitutional Courts in South America

Abstract Constitutional courts are influenced to some degree by politics. Still, when assessing their judicial decisions, most of the legal community in South America tends to adopt a narrow, normative, and legalistic perspective, lacking empirical and interdisciplinary approaches enriched by sociological and psychological perspectives. This paper reports some elements to surpass this mainstream perspective by departing from the rational acceptability thesis. The scope of the work is limited to a descriptive and normative sphere, and the method used is qualitative.