Recent interviews with the minister have caused perplexity due to the defensive tone and attacks made. At various times, it is not clear whether his speeches constitute rhetorical narratives in reaction to the wave of criticism of the Supreme Court, effective assessments of the facts or simply flawed acts.
Among the latter, his statement that he is a parliamentarian suggests a vision of the court as a government or state within the state, in which he himself would be a kind of prime minister who would have already initiated demarches with heads of the executive branch and the legislative houses for a “republican pact”.
The image also signals the little importance of President Fachin, who would be a mere head of state, a queen of England. What’s more: the minister stated that the weight of voices within the institution is different, that their representation is different: some of them can paralyze initiatives. In plain English, some ministers are worth more than others.
The other side of the coin in this story is that for the minister, the external environment of the court seems not to matter or matters little, which contrasts markedly with the findings in the literature, as I analyzed. In “”, Garoupa and Ginsburg argue that reputation is critical to the authority and effectiveness of courts, especially because judges lack, “the power of the sword and money”. Therefore it would be the “least dangerous power” as Hamilton would say. And he should, according to a famous analyst, cultivate “passive virtues”, eg self-restraint.
Gilmar does everything the other way around. Summon the press. And it blurs the defense of individuals and institutions. But why? Who are you trying to mobilize and for what battle? Those who mobilize are typically losing, but we don’t know for what or against whom. Internal enemies? The new senators elected in November?
The minister attacked the press and unreasonably compared the latter’s reputation with that of the court itself. Minimizing the magnitude of the scandal here is self-sabotage. Reputation is not just measured in opinion polls. Although it is a fact that the majority of the population — the estimate is somewhere between 60% (Atlas Intel) and 53% (Datafolha) of the population — does not have confidence in the institution. As Garoupa and Ginsburg show, reputation within the court’s internal audience—the legal community—is crucial. And the impact on her has been colossal. Ditto, in the press.
In the national press, there are already dozens of critical editorials from the main vehicles; internationally, coverage points to a major crisis. The Economist carries headlines such as “Supreme Impropriety” and “Vast scandal in the court; El País states that the case “shakes confidence in the Supreme Court” and “casts a shadow over the country’s most powerful judge”; and the Financial Times warns of “risks to institutional integrity”.
The scale of the reputational impact is consistent with the nature of the wrongdoing: it is a scandal. What’s more: it involves not just one member of the court, but two. The mobilization by the minister is a kind of self-inflicted defeat. The more it intervenes, the greater the reputational damage.
LINK PRESENT: Did you like this text? Subscribers can access seven free accesses from any link per day. Just click the blue F below.
