did not enter the sauna of judicial promiscuity last summer. Known from other cabins, jets and vacation homes, Toffoli cultivates useful friendship, friendship with built-in advantage. that of Lide ao Esfera, accepts invitations and provides security with daily payments paid by the STF. It doesn’t matter if the friend is or could be on the court’s agenda or its report.
Artificial friendships of judges generate our rightful distrust of the court’s decisions. Especially when there is no control and transparency. Even if, hypothetically, the friend does not influence the minister’s decision, the court’s authority is eroded. This impacts the rule of law.
Little is more elementary in the universal beabá of judicial ethics. It is a consensus between left and right, between north and south, between east and west. There is a consensus among legal theorists and practitioners around the world: the Judiciary must respect conflict of interest rules (translated into rules of suspicion and impediment ignored in the ). There are even difficult situations to detect conflict of interest. The case of Toffoli as rapporteur of the no action is one of them. And no further proof is needed.
A movement to save the minister is underway. They seek to sell the gesture as salvation for the court, even as salvation for democracy. The operation, however, instead of protecting, helps to do the opposite.
“the attempt to demoralize the court is an attack on democracy.” Constitutionalism, however, teaches something else: leniency towards functional corruption, which indeed attacks democracy.
Continuing to watch Toffoli’s back in the midst of the most serious banking scandal we know of brings superlative risks to the STF. Promiscuity weakens the court and a weak STF is of interest to political extremism. It’s a Bolsonarist project.
Criticism from friends of the court calls for a strong STF to defend democracy. Attacks by enemies of the court encourage the end of the STF to facilitate the path of autocracy. , a reference for judicial integrity, knows the distinction between criticism and attack, between friend and enemy. By mixing the two things, he allies the STF.
It seems more like complicity than collegiality. It’s more like the degenerate cry “all for one Toffoli” than the imaginary institutional cry “one Toffoli for all”. It’s more reminiscent of a castaway group than a republican coalition.
The virtue of collegiality calls for renunciation and detachment. It places the institution above individualities. It demands that public service prevail over personal whim and vanity. But collegiality cannot serve to protect internal enemies.
Toffoli emerges as the court’s biggest internal enemy today. It needs to be investigated. Risking institutional survival to leave your transgressions behind the door is an irresponsible gesture.
It was the first column I wrote for Sheet in November 2019. Interpellating the conduct of STF ministers continues to be fundamental to strengthening the institution of the STF.
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