The Rule of the Courts

Adriana Ancona de Faria

“Penal populism is doubly perverse. On the one hand, it offers a false solution by focusing on punishment as the answer to corruption. On the other, it weakens the transformative dimension of the agenda, which could lead to structural change. Criminalization means abandoning regulation; it means relinquishing the work of designing the institutional architecture capable of suffocating corruption. The politicization of the anti-corruption agenda also ties it to contingent partisan disputes and reduces the space for the technical debates required to address such a complex problem.” 9 The legacy left by Lava Jato for Brazil and for the Judiciary was a deep erosion of democratic institutional credibility and the rise of anti-system political movements supported by ideological frameworks that reject the recognition of fundamental rights as achievements of the civilizational process. Within this new political context – and under the Bolsonaro administration, which openly opposed the expansion of fundamental rights and adopted a denialist stance toward science in confronting the COVID-19 pandemic – the Judiciary once again assumed a counter majoritarian role in defense of constitutional order. Despite its prior contribution to democratic weakening, the courts reasserted their function as guardians of fundamental rights, imposing constitutional limits on the federal government. Particularly notable were STF decisions addressing the protection of Indigenous popu lations during the pandemic and affirming the authority of governors and mayors to implement public health measures – powers previously claimed exclusively by the federal government. The Bolsonaro government openly positioned itself against constitutionally protected values and rights and sought, through executive decrees, to dismantle public structures designed to ensure participation and social oversight. It presented itself in direct opposition to established democratic paradigms, thereby demanding persistent judicial intervention in defense of constitutional order. The final phase of Bolsonaro’s mandate was marked by attempts to destabilize Brazilian institutions, explicit threats against the branches of government, and a systematic campaign to delegitimize the electoral process

9 https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/materia/ilusao-da-lava-jato/ Edição 162. Março, 2020. Glezer, R. (2020, March). The illusion of Operation Lava Jato . Piauí Magazine , Issue 162

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