Judicial review of legislation originated in the United States of America with the ruling in the Marbury v. Madison case, back in 1803. The expansion of judicial activity into domains not originally imagined by the ideologues of judicial review will be expounded by means of a retrospective analysis of doctrine and case-law arising from said ruling in the USA, as well as of the rise of Kelsenfashioned constitutional adjudication in Europe. Such phenomenon is herein conceptualized as judicial activism and henceforth marked as material or substantive judicial activism as distinct from the procedural or formal type. Premised, thus, on the historical nature of judicial review and the influence of both the American and the European models have born on Brazil, an analysis is made of the expansion of Supremo Tribunal Federal adjudication in Brazil in the past few years, be it through the widening of its constitutional jurisdiction, be it through the enlargement both in duration and in function of the effects of its rulings as a result of procedural-based judicial activism.