In-person worship trial used as tryouts for Supreme Court seat

The longest-serving justice on Brazil’s Supreme Court, Marco Aurélio Mello will step down on July 5, one week before he turns 75 and reaches the court’s age of mandatory retirement. As one of the most valued perks of the top job, President Jair Bolsonaro will handpick his successor — and the government’s leading legal officials are already bending over backwards to please the head of state, hoping to convince Mr. Bolsonaro that they should be awarded the much-prized seat on the Supreme Court.

None of the potential replacements have been more blatant in their canvassing than Solicitor General André Luiz Mendonça and Prosecutor General Augusto Aras. To ingratiate themselves to the president, they are using a high-profile Supreme Court trial as a stage to stake their claims for the job. The case in question discusses whether local governments are allowed to ban in-person worship services during the most dramatic stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Churches had been closed in several Brazilian states, in a bid to contain the coronavirus spread. In the run up to Easter, however, Supreme Court Justice Nunes Marques...