Alexandre de Moraes: between criticism and justification

For some time, the decisions of Alexandre de Moraes, justice of Brazil’s Supreme Court and head of the country’s Superior Electoral Court, have been the subject of intense debates within the Brazilian legal community. And he has even attracted attention from the increasingly organized global far-right.

Pro-Trump members of Congress in the U.S. presented a report on the topic, while billionaire Elon Musk dished out strong criticism of Justice Moraes and called him a “dictator.” The justice responded by placing the owner of social media platform X under investigation for obstruction of justice, incitation of criminal activity, and the “willful criminal instrumentalization” of X (formerly Twitter).

The debate about Justice Moraes’ mistakes and successes, however, has been bogged down by buzzwords and platitudes that explain little, but divide a lot.

The far-right claims there is a “judiciary dictatorship” in place in Brazil, while claiming to be defenders of absolute freedom of expression — despite trying to undermine the credibility of the professional press, intimidate opponents, and profit from social media platforms’ tolerance of hate speech. 

Alexandre de Moraes, in turn, insists that “freedom of expression is not freedom of aggression, it is not freedom of offense, of threat,” but does not devote much time to justifying his severe orders against those under investigation. 

As a member of the Supreme Court, Justice Moraes’ decisions spread over several different fields. Thus, a complete assessment of his work depends on analyzing each case individually, which is often impossible due to investigations taking place under judicial secrecy. But there are three main threads that run through most criticism of Alexandre de Moraes

The many inquiries of Alexandre de Moraes

Justice Moraes oversees so many inquiries related to far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro and his allies and supporters that there is often some confusion about how that came to be.

It has become common to say that justice took over the rapporteurship of the so-called Fake News Inquiry in 2019 — based on a procedure that was already highly questioned at the time — and from then on became rapporteur for all other inquiries in any way connected to the initial probe.

The Fake News Inquiry came in for considerable criticism from the beginning because it was opened by the Supreme Court’s then-chief justice, Dias Toffoli, and passed on to Justice Moraes directly — and not by drawing lots, as is customary. 

In 2020, justices ruled, by...