A Supreme Court Coup D'Etat in Brazil
wsj.com
wsj.com
> First it launched the “fake news inquiry,” making itself the initiator, investigator and judge. This was a violation of the constitutional rights of Brazilians, who are entitled to have their criminal cases tried in local and state courts, with charges brought by local and state prosecutors.
> In July 2021 they launched a “digital militia inquiry,” targeting tech companies and their platforms. It forced them to censor content and demonetize Brazilians who held opinions that the court found unacceptable. Failure to comply meant the companies could no longer operate in Brazil.
> The justice made the tribunal notably more political than it had been by actively monitoring the speech of parties, candidates and citizens and censoring those with whom he disagreed.
> Around 1,500 suspects were rounded up and some kept in prison for up to a year awaiting trial. Some were hit with severe sentences for minor transgressions.
Regulating speech, suppressing peaceful dissent, and ignoring the right to due process and a fair trial is immoral, everywhere.
https://www.osetinstitute.org/blog/electronic-voting-banned-...
> When electronic voting machines are deployed, it must be possible for the citizen to check the essential steps in the election act and in the ascertainment of the results reliably and without special expert knowledge.
> In a republic, elections are a matter for the entire people and a joint concern of all citizens.
> Consequently, the monitoring of the election procedure must also be a matter for and a task of the citizen.
> Each citizen must be able to comprehend and verify the central steps in the elections.
A very wise judgement, in my opinion.
In Brazil, voting machines are mandated. The supreme court judges have declared that these machines are perfect and UNQUESTIONABLE. Multiple attempts to add an auditable paper trail to the machines were made by our elected representatives, and they were also deemed unconstitutional by the supreme court.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36543423
The most actively belligerent, aggressive stance towards the democratic order is that of the supreme court itself. Brazil is not even a democracy to begin with. Not a single brazilian voted for these judges, yet they rule monocratically.
Overall I think the court is running a high-risk high-reward strategy. They're trying to act as the ultimate guardian of democracy, by adopting methods that strain democratic principles. Is it smart? Hard to say, depends how it goes 10-50 years from now. Again, I'd prefer if all this was correctly formalized and institutionalized. Get your legislature on board.
Evaluate their "fake news" inquisition which started all the way back in 2019. You don't even have to take it from me. Here, a detailed comment from another HN user which I saved:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382
Grab any number of cases where one of the judges favored their own wife's client. They judge the cases brought by the law offices of their families. Conflicts of interest everywhere you look.
Scrutinize the countless times they ignored basic due process rules and violated the constitution. They punish family members for alleged individual crimes: censoring you is not enough, they gotta preemptively censor your family as well. Even though it's literally spelled out in the constitution that both of those things are illegal.
Recent leaked files demonstrate that they formed an illegal intelligence gathering task force whose purpose was to identify the political positions of defendants. They based decisions to arrest on constitutionally protected political speech. People have been arrested for "demonstrating an aversion to Lula and the worker's party". People right here on HN told me it was insane to believe one could be arrested over online comments but here we are.
I asked actual freaking lawyers what their thought about these decisions. They shook their heads. "Instead of applying the law, the supreme court decided to legislate", one told me. "Judges = gods", said another. It's completely fucked up.
It's much bigger than Bolsonaro. It doesn't even matter who's president since it's these guys who have the real power. Back then the left also used to complain about their censorship! Now that they're censoring the right they're heroes? Absolute nonsense.
> Overall I think the court is running a high-risk high-reward strategy.
It's not their place to run any strategy. They do not represent us. They were not voted into office. They have lifetime mandates for god's sake.
Their purpose is to apply the law as written by our actual representatives. Any attempt to deviate from that role is to usurp the power of our elected representatives. Any so called "activism" and "creative interpretation" is tyranny and evidence of a dictatorship of the judiciary.
The current situation is they could write whatever the hell they wanted on a piece of paper and it would become law. The police does their bidding. They just randomly decided that social media companies are liable for user content despite actual laws that say the exact opposite. They raised taxes.
> adopting methods that strain democratic principles
Their methods completely obliterate democratic principles. They are unelected judge-kings engaging in monocratic decision making and partidarian censorship. Please stop talking about democracy, just hearing that word makes me sick.
> Again, I'd prefer if all this was correctly formalized and institutionalized.
I'd prefer the application of Magnitsky sanctions to every single one of them and everyone even remotely connected with them. Trump is quite literally doing God's work here and my only complaint is he hasn't gone far enough yet.
The reasons why he's doing it are irrelevant. Maybe he actually likes Bolsonaro that much and wants to save him from the same "lawfare" he suffered. Maybe he wants to leverage the situation into economic advantage by covertly advancing the interests of american corporations. Maybe both. Maybe something else entirely that's escaped my vision. It doesn't matter because things are just too fucked up to care about anything other than the defeat of the judge-kings.
You just admitted it yourself. The unelected supreme court is legislating.
They have usurped the functions of the legislative branch. They do not represent us: not a single brazilian citizen voted for these judges. Yet everything they write is law. Worse: they frequently nullify the efforts of our actual representatives in a completely monocratic manner.
They often engage in "judicial activism" where they "creatively interpret" laws and generally make things up on the spot. Not too long ago they regulated social media by arbitrarily declaring the existing law unconstitutional and somehow reinterpreting it to mean the exact opposite of what the law said. They privatized their censorship by making social media companies liable for user content. Now the companies have to proactively censor everything the courts might take issue with, lest they get slapped with totally arbitrary fines and nationwide ISP blocks.
They've usurped the functions of the executive branch too. Not too long ago they raised taxes on all brazilians. Our president raised taxes, our congress blocked it, then the supreme court overrode our elected congress. The president is ruling through the court, just like in Venezuela.
They're also the victims, investigators, prosecutors, judges and executioners...
The only possible logical conclusion is that Brazil is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship of the unelected judiciary. They are judge-god-kings.
> A Supreme Court Coup d’Etat in Brazil
> Justice de Moraes is censoring critics and jailing opponents with no political check.
Many others and myself have been saying it for years... Now people are finally noticing.