It assumes the presidency of (Supreme Federal Court) on Monday (29) indicating as one of the priorities for management around the Court and cooling questions about the court’s performance.
The idea of self -restarting the judiciary has been one in recent months, when the court has been in clashes with the law sectors and (PL) allies in the midst of.
At the age of ten years in June, Fachin used a phrase already known to him: “to law what is law, to politics what is politics.” “We judges and judges, servants and servants cannot act outside the objective legal reason or be seen as a satellite of polarization that today plagues the world.”
Prior to that, he used the same expression by representing the current president of the Supreme, in a solemnity in the Planalto Palace on January 8, 2025.
At the time, he also stressed the importance of the court for the defense of democracy, which he said he was, but added that the court must remain true to the protection of legality and conscious “that our role is not that of protagonist.”
Fachin’s discreet style is similar to Rosa Weber’s, who chaired the court for just over a year, between 2022 and 2023. The minister has no habit of talking to journalists, granting few press interviews and often preferred demonstrations in the procedural records.
An example of Fachin’s discretion is the refusal of the offers of legal associations to play a party in honor of his possession on Monday night. Averse to extravagance, he decided to serve only water and coffee at the ceremony.
In August, at the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation, Fachin gave a speech by saying that “it is up to policy to deal with values and ideologies in dispute” and that “law must resist the temptation to prefer one of them”.
According to him, the plenary of the court are only part of the public sphere, but the game of democracy channels to Congress.
Although it receives scholarship attacks and was one of the targets of visa suspensions imposed by Donald Trump, Fachin has insisted on defending a Supreme who does not replace the political arena so as not to corrode the legitimacy of the system.
At the conference, he stressed the concern with minority groups, still underrected. At this point, Fachin said it was the court’s role to open the way for inclusion and avoid crystallization of privileges.
Finally, the minister also said he understood that there is a fourth informal branch in the Division of Powers, which includes prosecutors, courts of accounts, general controllership of the Union, National Council of Justice and even regulatory agencies.
“The complexity of Brazilian society – marked by inequality, regional diversity and social pluralism – requires a network democracy, in which the Supreme Court does not decide alone, but anchor in a network of supervisory and deliberative institutions.”
Behind the scenes, advisors and lawyers who attend the court have noticed significations even for the desires of the opposition. One example was the minister’s vote in the case that fixed the responsibility of digital platforms for third party content, in the process of Marco Civil da Internet.
Fachin accompanied the divergence open by. The two and were overdue in a trial loaded with messages against the big techs and in defense of democracy. The minority current gave primacy to the protection of freedom of expression and the fear of the risk of censorship, topics highly triggered by the right today.
Despite having reached the Supreme after a career in law and teaching, Fachin is regarded as a profile of pure blood judge, by institutional stance.
According to reports, the minister began to think of his management ahead of the judiciary gradually, talking to people who want close to him in the Court and CNJ, such as auxiliary advisors or judges, and invitations only from the second semester, as a deference to the predecessor.
Neither Barroso nor Fachin are pointed out as good political articulators. The role is played in the Supreme for the Dean and the Minister, two of the protagonists of the political scenario of recent years.
Internally, the new president wants to increase dialogue between the ministers. It intends, for example, to establish a routine of lunch among the 11 magistrates to facilitate the construction of consensus for judgments, especially in cases of prominence or so -called structural processes.
Another plan is to give more predictability to the judgment agenda. In the administration of the minister, the Supreme Court started to disclose the semiannual forecast of cases taken to the plenary. The practice was gradually abandoned, given the difficulty of predicting the duration of each analysis, requests of view or the arrival of urgent processes that cross the calendar.
Gaucho de Rondinha (RS), Edson Fachin studied law at UFPR (Federal University of Paraná), where he is also a full professor of civil law. He also made a career in the state, as a lawyer in the areas of Civil, Agrarian and Real Estate Law and State Attorney.
Fachin was nominated for () by () in April 2015 for the vacancy left by Joaquim Barbosa a year earlier. With the political environment tensioned, the then president decided to leave the nomination for the beginning of the second term.
The nomination encountered difficulties because, at the time, Fachin videos were rescued asking for votes for Dilma in the 2010 election. The resistance between opposition senators was attenuated after interventions by then -Senator Álvaro Dias, affiliated at the PSDB, the main opposition party in the period.
Álvaro, who is from Paraná, acted with Dilma’s opponents for Fachin. A month after being nominated, he was approved by 52 votes to 27.
Fachin was Dilma’s last name for the STF. In theory, she would have two more nominations, but the approval of the cane PEC in the Congress postponed the retirement of Marco Aurélio Mello and Celso de Mello for five years.
