Since Brazil’s return to democracy in the late 1980s, the country’s Supreme Court has faced many bumps and controversies along the way. The highest judicial body in the land has been the stage of earth-shattering trials, it sent a former president to jail, it had its chief justice presiding over two impeachment trials, it faced threats from radical groups, and it saw itself at war — sometimes veiled, sometimes not — with the other two branches of government.
One thing, however, has remained constant: the presence of Justice Celso de Mello, the court’s longest-tenured member, who now reaches the...
