Brazil’s Supreme Court becomes a battleground amid presidential elections

Hundreds of people rallied along the waterfront on Brazilian Independence Day. They wore yellow and green, the colors of both Brazil and far-right presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the son of the former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

The people marched for their conservative candidates. But one issue, above all, was center stage — the country’s Supreme Court.

Right-wing Congresswoman Júlia Zanatta stood on a sound truck and spoke to the crowd. “The next president, who will be Flávio Bolsonaro, will nominate four Supreme Court justices,” she said. “And can you imagine four more justices who are there to follow the Constitution? To follow our laws.”

What she meant is four more conservative justices.

Over the next presidential term, four seats on Brazil’s 11-justice Supreme Court will become vacant. The candidate who wins Brazil’s October election can nominate justices to the court. As it was for US President Donald Trump in his first term, Bolsonaro’s victory could mean a judicial revolution for the right.

“I do believe that Flávio Bolsonaro can put an end to this dictatorship,” said Antônio Oliveira, a Bolsonaro supporter in the crowd, who wore a bumper sticker on his back calling for the impeachment of one member of the Supreme Court. “I believe that he can change the Supreme Court justices. And that he will bring back prosperity and progress to Brazil.”

Brazil hasn’t had a dictatorship since the 1980s. But Bolsonaro supporters claim the country, and in particular the top court, has descended into dictatorship in recent years. That’s because the Supreme Court has repeatedly blocked their agenda.

When Flavio Bolsonaro’s father, Jair, was in power from 2019 through 2022, the Supreme Court ruled against many of his policies. It investigated his government’s dissemination of fake news and Bolsonaro’s allies.

The court jailed and convicted hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters for their participation in the Jan. 8, 2023, invasion of the Brazilian capital. Last year, it sentenced the elder Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison for his role in the plot to overturn his 2022 electoral loss to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

One Supreme Court justice who has led most of that work is Alexandre de Moraes. To the right, he is Public Enemy No. 1.

At the September rally, they chanted, “Get out, Moraes.” Signs and stickers could be seen everywhere in the crowd, calling for his impeachment.

Alexandre de Moraes has recently been thrust into an unraveling scandal. In mid-September, the court held a hearing to discuss Moraes’ relationship with banker Daniel Vorcaro, who is in prison on charges of financial fraud.

Vorcaro’s bank, Banco Master, had a multimillion-dollar contract with the law firm belonging to Moraes’ wife. The court postponed a ruling on the issue until after the election, but the high-profile hearing shook the country.

Moraes isn’t the only one wrapped in the scandal. Other members of the court also have ties to Vorcaro, as does Flavio Bolsonaro, despite his attacks on Moraes.

According to reporting from the Federal Police and The Intercept Brazil, Flavio received at least 61 million Brazilian reais ($12 million dollars based on the current exchange rate) from the banker last year to make a movie about his father.

Luciano da Ros, a political scientist at the Brazilian Federal University of Santa Catarina, said that the purpose of the Supreme Court hearing wasn’t just to “divert the focus of Flávio’s involvement in the scandal with Daniel Vorcaro — which seems to be even bigger than Alexandre de Moraes’ — but it also serves this goal of mobilizing the right’s agenda.”

Supreme Court Justice Andre Mendonça, whom Bolsonaro nominated in 2021, helped achieve that goal. He has led legal action against Moraes. And now, another Bolsonaro nominee, Justice Kássio Nunes Marques, presides over the country’s Superior Electoral Court, underlining the political divide in the country’s top courts.

“So, when you add this behavior by Mendonça at the Supreme Court with decisions that Mendonça and, for instance, Kássio Nunes have taken within the Electoral Superior Court, there is a sense that these judges are operating politically in order to try to help Flávio win the elections,” said Fabio de Sa e Silva, a professor of Brazilian Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Renato Vieira Ortiz, 65, who sells coconuts on the street for a living, said he’s never seen a court so divided and in conflict. “This institution is in crisis,” Ortiz said. “It’s even in an ideological crisis. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The court is supposed to be neutral. And now we see that where the money is, the power is also there.”

President Lula now says that if he’s reelected, he’ll call for judicial reform.

It’s hard to tell how the crisis in Brazil’s Supreme Court will impact the country’s elections. But the discourse is clearly inspiring Bolsonaro supporters ahead of the vote.