Bolsonaro’s threat to ‘pack’ Brazil’s Supreme Court

Days after qualifying for the runoff stage of the Brazilian presidential race, Jair Bolsonaro once again barrelled into a confrontation with the courts — frequent targets of his vitriol. In a Friday rant, Mr. Bolsonaro said one of the 11 Supreme Court justices is “helping to bury Brazil” and suggested members of the court prefer he loses the election because “they have something to hide.”

Then, he talked about an alleged initiative to increase the number of Supreme Court justices from 11 to 16. On Sunday, Mr. Bolsonaro said on a podcast that the move could be dropped if the court “turns down the temperature” against him and his entourage.

The proposal to make the Supreme Court larger and pack it with allies is not new. 

In 2018, when running on an anti-system platform, then-Congressman Bolsonaro proposed increasing the number of seats in the Supreme Court from 11 to 21, “so we can have a majority there.” 

While in office, he did not submit any such bill to Congress, but the president and his allies engaged in a longstanding fight with the court, repeatedly claiming it hinders the government’s work.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Mr. Bolsonaro issued an executive order giving himself exclusive powers to decree quarantines and lockdown-like measures in the country. As a coronavirus denialist, his objective was to keep most or all of businesses open. 

The Supreme Court stepped in and struck the order down, ruling that state and municipal governments have jurisdiction over Covid-related measures within their own limits. For several months, pro-Bolsonaro influencers have used that decision to falsely claim the court forbade the president from moving against the coronavirus.

In a related campaign, pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers have presided over...