Brazil’s far-right has created a “legal” way to stage a coup

Professor and constitutional law expert Ives Gandra Martins, 85, threw more gasoline on Brazil’s already explosive political crisis last week when he said — during a social media video broadcast — that President Jair Bolsonaro should evoke Article 142 of the Brazilian Constitution and call a military intervention. Mr. Martins justified his opinion by saying that the Supreme Court’s recent moves — which have included authorizing a criminal investigation against the president and greenlighting a Federal Police operation against some of his closest supporters — were over-politicized and needed correction.

Article 142 concerns the Armed Forces, establishing them as “regular and permanent national institutions, organized based on hierarchy and discipline, under the supreme authority of the president, to defend the nation, the constitutional powers and, by the initiative of any [of such powers], ensure law and order.” It is frequently brought up by the far-right as a possible justification for launching a self-coup. In September 2018, Vice President Hamilton Mourão said such a move would be possible, “in the case of anarchy.” Last week, President Bolsonaro endorsed that...