The chief justice of Brazil’s Supreme Court, Luís Roberto Barroso, defends the court’s investigation into attacks on the court and other government institutions.
Credit...Dado Galdieri for The New York Times

Luís Roberto Barroso, Brazil’s Chief Justice, Defends Supreme Court’s Expanded Power

The chief justice of Brazil’s Supreme Court, Luís Roberto Barroso, defended the court in the face of growing debate over its aggressive role in politics.

by · NY Times

It has put presidents in prison. It has taken on Elon Musk — and won. It has become one of the world’s toughest policemen of the internet. And it appears poised to make Jair Bolsonaro the next former Brazilian president in handcuffs.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has become perhaps the most powerful institution in Brazil — and one of the most powerful top courts in the world — in part because it has granted itself that power.

For years, the court has overseen sprawling criminal investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters. As a result, many on Brazil’s left believe the court helped save the nation’s democracy in the face of an attempted coup, while those on the right believe it is now the court itself that poses a democratic threat.

The New York Times examined the court’s expanding power in an article published Wednesday. The court’s chief justice, Luís Roberto Barroso, 66, is a former state prosecutor who has studied at Harvard and Yale University. In an interview, he defended the court’s actions and argued that they could be a model for fighting a global far-right movement.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Why has Brazil’s Supreme Court taken a much more proactive stance than many top courts around the world?

We are vigorously defending democracy. And we’re playing this role in the face of a movement that I consider global, radical and far-right, and that attacks institutions, circulates misinformation and disinformation, and — it’s still being investigated — perhaps even attempted a coup.

Yet, in some ways, the court’s reaction to that threat has also been extreme. It has jailed people without charges, raided people’s homes for criticizing the court and silenced hundreds of people on social media. Are you sacrificing democratic norms to save democracy?

It’s very important to not lose sight of the context. We had a parade of tanks here in front of the Supreme Court to intimidate the court. We had a request from the former president to fly planes low over the Supreme Court to break the windows. We faced a president who, on Brazil’s independence day, personally attacked Supreme Court ministers and threatened to no longer comply with court decisions.

Right after the presidential election, there were camps of thousands of people outside the Army barracks calling for a coup. We had the invasion of Congress, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court.

Therefore, it’s necessary to take into account the environment in which we operate and the type of forces we’ve had to face. Remember that the former president received 49 percent of the vote, and he made the Supreme Court his main target. So it’s no surprise that there’s a negative, if not resentful, view from a portion of the population.

But it has been two years since the election, and the court has held on to its expanded power. Several top government officials have told me they’re worried that these investigations have not ended. When will they?

I think soon. Almost everything that needed to be investigated has been investigated. It’s up to the attorney general to file the complaint.

I wouldn’t like to commit to a deadline, but it’s not unreasonable to imagine that by the end of this year, beginning of next year, this could be over.

One of the court’s most polarizing strategies is its censoring of people on social media who the court deems a threat to democracy. Many in Brazil argue that silencing people is its own democratic threat. What is your view?

The idea of ​​the First Amendment in the United States is different from any other part of the world. The world doesn’t accept hate speech and incitement to violence with the tolerance of the First Amendment.

I’m not saying that the United States is wrong and the rest of the world is right. But countries have different circumstances. And a young democracy like Brazil needs to protect itself from real risks.

Conservatism is a legitimate political option. And it is desirable that there are different views. I’m referring to extremism. Intolerance, verbal aggression, hate speech and physical violence. That’s what is unacceptable.

This debate led to the court’s dispute with Elon Musk and its blocking of X across Brazil. Why was that necessary?

The story of X is very simple and has nothing to do with freedom of expression. It has to do with the rule of law. Brazilian law provides that foreign companies operating in Brazil must have representatives in Brazil. What did X do? Pull its representatives. Therefore, it carried out an illegal act and thus was not able to operate in Brazil.

The other complaint about the Supreme Court’s expanded role is that there is no room for appeal if the court errs. So where is the accountability?

Look, this is a situation that exists in all democracies. Someone has to have the right to decide last. Accountability arises from the rationality of your decisions and your ability to demonstrate that the solutions are constitutionally adequate and achieve justice, which is ultimately our role.

Therefore, your accountability is not to another institution; it is to the whole of society. And the legitimacy of a court depends on people understanding what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

We are living in the longest period of democracy in Brazilian history. A democracy that, in my opinion, has weathered recent storms that, in other parts of the world, have brought the collapse of democracy. And, here, the Supreme Court did not allow that to happen.

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