In , family members of Federal Supreme Court judges became freer to act in cases involving conflicts of interest with ministers. That month, the court annulled a section of the Civil Procedure Code and began allowing judges to act in.
The extinct part of the law prohibited the practice of trying to influence the outcome of trials. A client hires family members of a judge in case A, in which the minister does not act, to seek to favor his claims in case B, in which the judge acts.
If it had not been invalidated by , the rule would prohibit the minister from acting in actions of interest to . This is because the company, the office of Moraes’ wife, Viviane Barci, according to .
Without the flexibility, it would also have been prevented from entering into a business dispute. In December 2023, now free from restriction, Toffoli from the conglomerate, due to corruption, confesses.
Toffoli and Moraes made up the majority of seven, which prevailed in the August 2023 trial that freed magistrates to judge cases involving relatives’ clients. , Luiz Fux, , and also voted to overturn the law that prohibited this participation.
The four votes in favor of the Civil Procedure Code provision were from Luís Roberto Barroso, Rosa Weber, and . Only Fachin and Cármen remain in the court and are now trying — he as president, she as rapporteur — to reinstitute restrictions on the behavior of ministers.
Fachin’s idea is to approve a code of conduct, like those adopted by constitutional courts in the United States and Germany. The São Paulo section of the Brazilian Bar Association reestablishes the veto on acting in cases involving clients of relatives of magistrates.
Invited trips, gifts, granting of hearings, publicity of agendas, demonstrations and professional activities after leaving the court are also items regulated in the draft OAB-SP. To adopt a code of conduct, Edson Fachin and Cármen Lúcia will have to convince at least four other colleagues.
