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Comment by brigadier132 | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain the me what actual power do Brazilian supreme court justices have? Seems like Brazilian judges are like Judge Dredd.

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The actual power is what a society will accept. At this point it seems like he can do anything a monarch could do in a kinda modern society.

Sure but I'm asking in theory, what is the power of justices according to their constitution.

That's explained in Article 102 of the Brazilian Constitution (in Portuguese):

https://constituicao.stf.jus.br/dispositivo/cf-88-parte-1-ti...

So just from skimming a translated version, it does not seem like Judges have the power to impose fines, ban unrelated companies that are owned by the same person, or ban things like VPNs. Am I missing something?

You are not missing anything. The Brazilian court has done far more about things which it does not have any basis for. There are many previous HN threads about it as well. Some brazilians had detailed those instances in those threads.

I'm guessing a "skimmed translation" probably doesn't give you a complete understanding of Brazilian law...

Yes, thank you, that's why I've been asking people. Do you have an actual answer or do you just have nothing of value to add?

Do note that some a important power of the US supreme court, the right to declare laws void because they are unconstitutional, is not a right listed in the Constitution itself.

Rather the supreme court declared in 1803 that they had that right, because it makes sense if you sort of squint at the constitution.

I respect this response. So many people would have derailed the conversation by disagreeing.

The main issue here – and this is will eventually happen to every democracy – is that given the right incentives and conditions, _everything_ can be considered "legal" from a system perspective.

Because of authoritarian traumas post-WWII, most democracies evolved to a highly controlled executive, mostly by the judiciary – which is supposed to be monitored by the legislative.

But if you pack the court (the left is dominates Brazil in the last 40 years) and pay enough to the House (the executive controls the federal budget), you pretty much won the game (you are able to make your own rules).

It's amazing how someone from outside like Elon Musk is way, way more powerful than all elected representatives in Brazil, simply because he is somewhat independent from the political apparatus (the most voted congressman in the last election had been arbitrarily banned from social media, so votes really don't count).

The only way out is a combination of international pressure + local manifestations.

On paper, the Congress is perfectly capable of removing any supreme court minister for any kind of wrongdoing. They can't exactly reverse the decisions, but they can make them ineffective too.

On practice, well, they are clearly above the other powers, and only the supreme court plenarium can do anything about the individual judges.

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