Pillar of Brazil’s Supreme Court retires

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 mandatory retirement age of 75 and steps down after 31 years. The story of the Supreme Court during democratic times is intertwined with Justice Mello’s own career.

And on October 13, the Supreme Court will lose its staunchest defender of individual civil rights. Celso de Mello famously voided a police raid of a homeless man’s tent, considering that the tent was the man’s legal domicile and, therefore, no police action could take place there without a warrant, or before 6 am, as Brazilian law dictates. 

Furthermore, since 2019, Justice Mello has also distinguished himself as the court’s most-vocal opponent to President Jair Bolsonaro. He has used his decisions to counter what he sees as the head of state’s threats to democratic order — going as far as comparing the current moment to the crumbling of the Weimar Republic...