As of Jair Bolsonaro’s election as president, the Supreme Court had begun to see itself as a sort of democratic guardrail to counter the head of state’s anti-democratic outbursts. This partly explains some of the court’s recent moves, such as ordering the Senate to kick off a hearings committee to investigate the government’s pandemic response or voting to force the administration into carrying out the decennial census, justified on the basis of respecting citizens’ “right to information.”
But the power the Supreme Court has is founded upon the legitimacy that political actors recognize in it — in...
