Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court is a strange beast. Its 11 members—often selected based on personal connections and ideological alignment as opposed to professional aptitude—are given bizarre powers to stall and fast-track cases at a whim. In recent years, the court has become awash with individual injunctions and justices playing out political proxy wars in full view of the public. The result is a bloated system and a jaw-dropping backlog of cases.
The justices themselves cannot shoulder all the blame for this, however. The STF, as it is known, has three main responsibilities which single it out from any similar superior tribunal in the world. Besides serving as the last court of appeal for any criminal or civil case, and ruling on any issues concerning the constitution, the STF is also the only place elected officials can be put to trial for crimes committed during their term. With a thoroughly corrupt political system in a litigious society, these cases pile up fast. And with regard to its role as the arbiter of the Constitution, while Brazil’s 1998 Magna Carta represented great advances in several aspects,...
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