On Jan. 15, 2026, Brazilian Excellent Courtroom Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered that incarcerated ex-President Jair Bolsonaro be given a vital improve in his jail accomodations.
Six months in the past, the excessive courtroom – with Moraes as its maximum robust member – passed down a long jail time period to Bolsonaro for plotting a coup to stick in energy after his 2022 election loss.
In convicting the far-right chief, the Excellent Federal Courtroom of Brazil refused to bow to blowback from each Bolsonaro’s robust home base and an exterior force marketing campaign through the Trump management. Certainly, many commentators and media retailers held up the courtroom as being the singular drive that effectively curbed Bolsonarism – and, within the procedure, stored democracy from that motion’s authoritarian venture.
But as a professor of public legislation and professional on Brazil’s judiciary, I imagine that narrative misses a deeper truth. Whilst the Excellent Courtroom performed a decisive function in combating Bolsonaro’s authoritarian ambitions within the type of a coup, its higher objective used to be no longer essentially to offer protection to democracy. Reasonably, there may be proof suggesting that its objective used to be to shield itself, its institutional energy and its legitimacy within the eyes of the general public.
In a small means, the courtroom’s newest determination to improve Bolsonaro’s jail lodging is itself emblematic of that manner. The transfer to a bigger mobile – with a lounge, kitchen and bed room – comes after repeated lawsuits from Bolsonaro over the stipulations of his detainment. What his attorneys in reality need is for the sentence time period to be diminished, or for his or her shopper to be moved into area arrest. In that mild, Moraes’ order is an try to neuter such calls for whilst reasserting the authority of the courtroom.
The upward thrust of Bolsonaro
Brazil is aware of the hazards of authoritarianism smartly. After two decades of army dictatorship, the rustic promulgated a brand new charter in 1988. The file aimed toward developing a good, democratic and inclusive society. It assured social rights, common well being care, training and a minimal salary enough to maintain households.
However over the next a long time, the promise of that social venture did not materialize for many households. Corruption scandals ruled the headlines, public protection worsened, and thousands and thousands felt left in another country’s democratic good points. A more youthful era that had by no means skilled dictatorship was disenchanted with politics and longed for trade.
In 2018, this disillusionment cleared the path for Bolsonaro, a former army officer who promised to carry again legislation and order. As president, Bolsonaro attacked the clicking, sowed mistrust within the electoral device and situated himself as the one truthful choice in a corrupt status quo that for him incorporated the judiciary.
The Statue of Justice stands in entrance of the Excellent Courtroom all the way through the decision and sentencing segment of Jair Bolsonaro’s trial in Brasilia, Brazil, on Sep 11, 2025.
AP Photograph/Eraldo Peres, Fil
An impressive courtroom protective itself?
Even though Bolsonaro directed explicit animus on the judiciary, then again, broader criticisms of the rustic’s perfect courts didn’t pop out of nowhere.
The complaint got here from many quarters, from the ones complaining about its excessive energy to these pointing at its exorbitant prices. Certainly, the rustic’s Congress continues to obtain a nonetheless rising selection of proposals to reform the judiciary device.
In 2008, Brazilian criminal professional Oscar Vilhena Vieira, infrequently a far-right ideologue, raised issues about an expansive, unelected establishment having such a lot affect within the policymaking procedure and politics of Brazil. He coined the time period “Supremocracy” to explain this phenomenon of enlargement of judicial energy, which might result in an imbalance within the separation of powers and judicial instability, since jurists can’t expect the following steps taken through the Brazilian Excellent Courtroom.
Vieira warned that this kind of drive, running inside a fallacious political and institutional context, may just create issues of legitimacy and compliance.
Nearly two decades later, the Excellent Federal Courtroom’s energy has endured to enlarge, resulting in the intervention at the government’s energy all the way through the COVID-19 pandemic, when the courtroom dominated that states and municipalities had authority to put into effect their very own insurance policies, so long as supported through proof supplied through global companies. This used to be a landmark second as it successfully overrode the government’s try to centralize the pandemic reaction, sparking a countrywide debate over whether or not the courtroom used to be protective the best to well being or overstepping its bounds to strip the president of his administrative powers.
Bolsonaro without delay threatened the authority of the Excellent Federal Courtroom and rallied supporters on Sept. 7, 2021 – Brazil’s Independence Day. For the justices, no longer performing all of a sudden and decisively in responses held the danger of signaling weak point and may just inspire long term demanding situations to their very own protection, institutional survival and regulate over the steadiness of powers.
How the courtroom works
Justices of Brazil’s Excellent Federal Courtroom are appointed through presidents and showed through the Senate to serve in quite a lot of other purposes till the age of 75 years outdated. On all constitutional issues, the courtroom has final authority, whether or not in circumstances introduced through people or establishments, and has the overall energy of figuring out whether or not rules handed through the legislature are constitutional.
The courtroom additionally has the ability to pass judgement on federal government in prison issues, even after the tip in their mandates, if the crime is hooked up with their function. That is the case of Bolsonaro.
The courtroom’s wide jurisdiction interprets to tens of 1000’s of recent circumstances annually and a particularly massive finances. The courtroom provides nearly 1 billion reais — round US$ 190 million — a yr to the federal finances, and the justices revel in many perks, together with housing help and visits in a foreign country.
Controversially, it has additionally created alternatives for the justices’ members of the family. Justices not too long ago dominated that nominating members of the family to public positions is constitutional, despite the fact that critics argue that nepotism will have a dangerous impact on democracy.
Hundreds march to protest Congress and a proposed amnesty invoice that would receive advantages former President Jair Bolsonaro on Sept. 21, 2025.
Ratib Al Safadi / Anadolu by means of Getty Pictures
The plot twist
The courtroom’s assertiveness in regard to Bolsonaro – consistent with earlier movements – suggests to me that self-preservation is a big motive force of the justices’ movements, moderately than only the results of any dedication to uphold democracy.
Indisputably, it used to be a big fulfillment for Brazilian democracy to have, for the primary time, attempted and convicted high-ranking civilian and army coup plotters. However on the similar time it allowed the courtroom to flex, and most likely additionally keep, its powers.
Tendencies since Bolsonaro’s sentencing have resulted in fears that Brazil may well be heading to an consequence that “ends in pizza,” because the Brazilian idiom has it. This is to mention that this can be a political scandal that ends with out significant punishment.
In December 2025, a part of the courtroom and congressional leaders reached a behind-the-scenes settlement to reject amnesty for the ones concerned within the failed coup of Jan. 8, 2023, in go back for diminished sentences. In a transparent nod to his base, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signaled that he would no longer stand for any relief in sentencing and vetoed the invoice.
If a presidential veto is rejected through Congress, it might see Bolsonaro’s 27-year sentence diminished to only over two years in jail, in keeping with experiences.
Even in need of a discounted sentence, Bolsonaro is already taking a look at a confinement lived out in relative luxurious, when put next with maximum criminals in Brazil’s jail device.
However that would possibly serve the aim of Brazil’s perfect courtroom — quieting a problem to its authority, whilst making it transparent who holds the important thing to any longer tweak to his sentence.
