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<p>This article examines how the Brazilian Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ) operationalized a constitutive structural metaphor—“digital estate administration is physical estate administration”—to address the normative vacuum in digital succession law. Through Critical Metaphor Analysis of STJ decisions from 2017 to 2025, we demonstrate that judges functioned as cartographers, mapping the traditional <i>inventariante</i> (estate administrator) onto posthumous digital asset management without legislative authorization. Situating this judicial creativity within Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatic framework, we trace how the <i>inventariante digital</i> doctrine proliferated non-linearly across civil succession law, consumer protection, constitutional privacy doctrine, and data protection law. While this metaphorical mapping generated standing, procedural competence, and fiduciary duties for heirs, it also produced concealed normative costs: the patrimonial logic of traditional succession law conflicts structurally with the informational self-determination principles enshrined in Brazil's Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD, Lei 13.709/2018). We argue that metaphor operates as invisible legislation, generating legal effects through cognitive projection rather than democratic deliberation. This analysis contributes to interdisciplinary legal theory by demonstrating how conceptual metaphors function as generative mechanisms in judicial decision-making and how rhizomatic proliferation explains contemporary doctrinal innovation in civil law jurisdictions.</p>

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The Judge as Cartographer: Rhizomatic Metaphorical Mapping and the Judicial Creation of the Digital Executor in Brazilian Case Law

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月29日

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  • Jorge José Lawand

摘要

This article examines how the Brazilian Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ) operationalized a constitutive structural metaphor—“digital estate administration is physical estate administration”—to address the normative vacuum in digital succession law. Through Critical Metaphor Analysis of STJ decisions from 2017 to 2025, we demonstrate that judges functioned as cartographers, mapping the traditional inventariante (estate administrator) onto posthumous digital asset management without legislative authorization. Situating this judicial creativity within Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatic framework, we trace how the inventariante digital doctrine proliferated non-linearly across civil succession law, consumer protection, constitutional privacy doctrine, and data protection law. While this metaphorical mapping generated standing, procedural competence, and fiduciary duties for heirs, it also produced concealed normative costs: the patrimonial logic of traditional succession law conflicts structurally with the informational self-determination principles enshrined in Brazil's Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD, Lei 13.709/2018). We argue that metaphor operates as invisible legislation, generating legal effects through cognitive projection rather than democratic deliberation. This analysis contributes to interdisciplinary legal theory by demonstrating how conceptual metaphors function as generative mechanisms in judicial decision-making and how rhizomatic proliferation explains contemporary doctrinal innovation in civil law jurisdictions.