Brazilian Lawsuit Search by State: Complete Guide to 12 State Courts

Brazilian state justice is fragmented by design: each state has its own State Court (TJ), each TJ picks its own technology stack, and local forensic calendars vary. For law firms, compliance teams, fintechs and M&A advisors operating across multiple states, lawsuit search becomes a logistical problem — which is exactly where unified API tools matter.

This guide maps the 12 states with courts covered by Vigilant, spanning systems (ESAJ vs PJE), local peculiarities, and how to query each. The list is not exhaustive — Brazil has 27 state TJs — but concentrates over 70% of national case volume.

Why “lawsuit search by state” is a problem

Until 2008, each court used its own system (or none). In 2008, CNJ published Resolution 65 standardizing the Unique Case Number (CNJ), creating a basis for interoperability. In parallel, two initiatives competed to become the de facto system:

• ESAJ (Court Automation System) — developed by Softplan. Adopted by 7 state TJs.
• PJE (Electronic Judicial Process) — developed by CNJ with TJRN. Adopted by 13 state TJs.

Neither fully won. Some states (Bahia, Ceará) keep both systems simultaneously for historical reasons. Others (like TJSP) resisted PJE migration and remain on ESAJ. The result: any cross-state query has to handle multiple systems, interfaces and calendars.

Covered courts by system

ESAJ (Softplan)

State courts on ESAJ share a similar interface: mandatory CAPTCHA on every search, paginated listing. Manual access is easy but doesn’t scale — above ~20 queries/day, manual work becomes the bottleneck.

TJ	State	Instances	Note
TJSP	São Paulo	1st + 2nd	Largest case volume in Brazil (~25% of national total)
TJAC	Acre	1st + 2nd	Smallest volume — ~150K cases
TJAL	Alagoas	1st + 2nd	Coastal concentration (real estate disputes)
TJAM	Amazonas	1st + 2nd	River-based comarcas, continental territory
TJBA	Bahia	1st + 2nd	Dual system — also uses PJE (see below)
TJCE	Ceará	1st + 2nd	Dual system — also uses PJE

PJE (CNJ)

Courts on PJE tend to have a leaner and more stable UI — rarely require CAPTCHA on public searches. The architecture is event-driven, so digitally filed cases become visible within minutes (against up to 24h on ESAJ).

TJ	State	Instances	Note
TJRJ	Rio de Janeiro	1st + 2nd	PJE since 2018, strong in real estate
TJMG	Minas Gerais	1st + 2nd	Separate subdomains per instance (pje and pje2)
TJDFT	Federal District	1st + 2nd	Single jurisdiction (capital only)
TJPE	Pernambuco	1st + 2nd	PJE since 2020
TJMA	Maranhão	1st + 2nd	Strong agrarian and indigenous activity
TJAP	Amapá	1st + 2nd	Small volume, environmental focus

States with two systems running in parallel

Bahia (TJBA) and Ceará (TJCE) keep ESAJ and PJE active in parallel. The historical reason differs:

• TJBA: ESAJ was deployed first in the capital (Salvador) and large comarcas. PJE came later, migrating interior comarcas first. Some comarcas remain on ESAJ.
• TJCE: Fortaleza capital still uses ESAJ in many courts, while the interior migrated to PJE early.

Practical implication: complete due diligence on a Bahia or Ceará CPF requires querying BOTH systems. Naive scraping picks one and misses cases. Vigilant handles this internally — a single API call with “TJBA” or “TJCE” queries both systems and consolidates the return.

Forensic calendar by state

Each state has state holidays that suspend procedural deadlines. The most relevant:

State	State holiday suspending deadlines	Date
São Paulo	Constitutionalist Revolution	July 9
Rio de Janeiro	São Sebastião	January 20
Minas Gerais	Minas Gerais Magna Date	March 25
Bahia	Bahia Independence	July 2
Ceará	Ceará Magna Date	March 25
Pernambuco	Pernambucan Revolution	March 6
Alagoas	Alagoas Political Emancipation	September 16
Maranhão	Maranhão Adherence to Independence	July 28
Acre	Acre Creation / Elevation to State	June 15 / August 6
Amazonas	Elevation to Province / Patron Saint	September 5 and 8
Amapá	Amapá Creation	September 13

Beyond these, all courts suspend deadlines during the forensic recess (Dec 20 to Jan 20) and national holidays. Specific comarcas may have municipal patron-saint suspensions — always check the official calendar before critical deadlines.

Systems NOT in this guide

Important cases outside Vigilant’s current coverage:

• Federal Justice (TRFs and JFs): independent system, cases against the Union, INSS, federal agencies. Vigilant covers TRF-1 (Federal District, MG, MA, among others) and TRF-3 (SP, MS) via the federal PJE system.
• Labor Justice (TRTs): 24 regional labor courts. TRT coverage is not on Vigilant’s immediate roadmap.
• Electoral Justice (TREs/TSE): electoral and party cases, independent system.
• Military Justice (state and federal): own system.

For full company (corporate) due diligence, you may need to combine state TJ + TRT + local TRF. Vigilant simplifies the state part — the rest is still manual today.

How to choose which courts to query

Depends on the use case:

Due diligence on an individual residing in SP: TJSP is mandatory. If business activity in other states, add the TJ of that state (e.g. TJMG if they operate a factory in MG).

Due diligence on a company headquartered in RJ: TJRJ + TJSP (clients/suppliers in SP are common) + TJ of each branch’s state. For labor liability, add TRT-1 (via another tool — Vigilant doesn’t cover TRT).

Compliance for a national fintech: TJSP + TJRJ + TJMG cover ~50% of the client base. Add TJs of other states with geographic concentration.

M&A of a company with multi-state operations: All 12 Vigilant-covered courts, plus TRT-1/2/3/4 and TRF-1/3 as the operation requires.

Automating queries at volume

Above ~20 CPFs/day, manual queries become a bottleneck. Options:

1. Vigilant API — a single REST call returns structured JSON from the 12 covered courts. Full OpenAPI 3.1 docs.
2. Google Sheets + Vigilant — Apps Script integration for no-code batch due diligence. Practical guide at Vigilant + Google Sheets integration.
3. Custom scraping — feasible but expensive to maintain (CAPTCHAs, layout changes, rate limits). Comparison at best Brazilian court data APIs.

For teams that need to continuously monitor new cases against a portfolio, Vigilant offers automated monitoring with email and webhook alerts — register the CPF once and receive notifications when new cases appear in any of the 12 courts.

Next steps

• To understand ESAJ vs PJE in technical depth: ESAJ vs PJE in 2026.
• To query a specific CPF across multiple courts: Brazilian Lawsuit Search by CPF in 12 Courts.
• To see Vigilant’s full coverage: /en/courts/.

Each court listed above has its own reference page with detailed stats, step-by-step manual query guide, and local peculiarities — click the table links to access.