Prior to the beginning of the judgment, I wrote here that the net balance to the court would be negative in any scenario. “The trial will be fatally perceived as hyperpolitized – it is prohibitive cost – at a critical moment for Brazilian democracy.” The worst scenario materialized. And Trump’s intervention in the process represents a shock in the system. It alters the perverse balance between parliamentarians and judges in which there is interdependence: the threat of impeachment is the counterpart of conviction threats in criminal proceedings.
But it has two consequences that move in the opposite direction, and that partly neutralize. The first is that it has increased the incentives for the Bolsonarist base of trying to approve the impeachment of Alexandre de Moraes, replace the amnesty on the agenda and eliminate the forum by function prerogative. The second is that the effect of national union against the extravagant and unpublished external interference. The change in the forum, however, may prosper because it incorporates the alliance a block of deputies beyond the PL involved in little republican actions.
The forum is the basis of the criminal jurisdiction of – which has no parallel in other countries, but here – but it was instrumental for the democratic resilience in the Court. The rise of Bolsonaro inaugurated an era of open confrontation. And here there is a crucial new fact: constitutional arbitration has changed its key. It is not a matter of containing the excesses of the executive or interpower conflicts involving the legislature, but to respond to attacks on the court itself; which is unprecedented and launched hyperbolic answers in growing. The egg of the serpent.
The profile of passive arbitration agent no longer gives an account of the virulent attacks (which have included judges’ murder plans). But this answer – considering controversial monocratic decisions to say the minimum – has led to very high costs to the Supreme Court. It generated perplexity the participation of member of the Court as an interested party and judge. Individual hyperprotagonism charged a price for.
If impeachment or amnesty has a low probability of success, the forum is different: it was dead letter because members never granted prior license to their members. Institutional change occurs by shocks ,. The Hildebrando Paschoal scandal in 2001 launched the elimination of the license. The burden of impunity has gone to the STF since then. But the case Ronaldo Cunha Lima exposed the strategic manipulation of forums to ensure impunity. The STF’s response was to restrict it to actions linked to the position. New change in 2025 with the current trial: the forum becomes perpetual ,.
The change proposal restores the status quo pre pascoal by which the House will control the license (to steal and kill) and/or extend the processes in time, increasing risk of impunity. Here’s the dilemma. The problem is systemic and involves institutional degradation due to, among other things, the hyperpolitized and personalistic pattern of nominations for the Court.
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