Supreme Federal Court

Supreme Federal Court
Supremo Tribunal Federal
The Supreme Federal Court at the Praça dos Três Poderes
Established	1829
Country	Brazil
Location	Brasília
Composition method	Presidential nomination with Senate confirmation
Authorized by	Constitution of Brazil
Number of positions	11
Website	Official website
President
Currently	Ricardo Lewandowski
Since	September 10, 2014

The Supreme Federal Court (Portuguese: Supremo Tribunal Federal, [suˈpɾẽmu tɾibuˈnaw fedeˈɾaw], abbreviated STF) is the supreme court (court of last resort) of Brazil, serving primarily as the Constitutional Court of the country. It is the highest court of law in Brazil for constitutional issues and its rulings cannot be appealed. On questions involving exclusively lower legislation, the highest court is, by rule, the Superior Court of Justice.

Alongside its appeal competence, mostly by the Extraordinary Appeal (Recurso Extraordinário), the Court has a small range of cases of original jurisdiction, including the power of judicial review, judging the constitutionality of laws passed by the National Congress, through a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (Ação Direta de Inconstitucionalidade, or ADIn).

The eleven judges of the court are called Ministers (Ministro), although having no similarity with the government body of ministers. They are appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. There is a mandatory retirement age of 75.

All judicial and administrative meetings of the Supreme Court have been broadcast live on television since 2002. The Court is open for the public to watch the meetings.

In May 2009 The Economist called the Supreme Federal Court "the most overburdened court in the world, thanks to a plethora of rights and privileges entrenched in the country's 1988 constitution (...) till recently the tribunal's decisions did not bind lower courts. The result was a court that is overstretched to the point of mutiny. The Supreme Court received 100,781 cases last year."

History

The court was inaugurated during the colonial era in 1808, the year that the royal family of Portugal (the House of Braganza) arrived in Rio de Janeiro. It was originally called the House of Appeals of Brazil (Casa de Suplicação do Brasil).

The proclamation of the Brazilian Declaration of Independence and the adoption of the Imperial Constitution in 1824 preceded the establishment of the Supreme Court of Justice (Supremo Tribunal de Justiça) in 1829. With the first Constitution of the Republic, the current Court was established.

Although the constitutional norms that regulated the creation of the Court allowed Deodoro da Fonseca, Brazil's first president, to nominate an entirely new Court, the president chose to nominate as the first members of the Supreme Federal Court the ministers who were then serving as members of the predecessor imperial Court.

Two hundred members have served on the Court. The Constitution of 1891 decided that the Court would have 15 members. When Getúlio Vargas came into power, the number of members was reduced to 11. The number was changed to 16 in 1965, but returned to 11 in 1969 and has not changed since. Of all Presidents of Brazil, only one (Café Filho) never nominated a minister.

The Justice, by Alfredo Ceschiatti in the front of the Supreme Federal Court

President of the Court

The President and Vice-president of the Court are elected by their peers for a term of two years by secret ballot. The currently serving President is Ricardo Lewandowski.

Re-election for a consecutive term is not allowed. By tradition, the members of the Court always elect as president the most senior minister of the Court that has not yet served as President, to avoid politicization of the Court. Therefore, it is known beforehand that the next Presidents of the Court, after Ricardo Lewandowski, will be, in order, Carmen Lúcia and Dias Toffoli.

If all members currently sitting on the Court have already served as president, the rotation starts all over again; however, due to the existence of a compulsory retirement age, and the consequent appointment of new ministers to fill those vacancies, it is very rare for the cycle to be completed and restarted, and some ministers are forced to retire before their turn in the presidency arrives, as expected to happen with Teori Zavascki.

According to the same convention, the Court selects as vice-president for a certain term the minister who, according to that tradition, will be selected president in the succeeding term. Also by tradition, the elections of the president and vice-president are never unanimous, there being always one isolated minority vote in each election, as the ministers who are to be elected never cast their votes for themselves; such votes are cast either for the Dean of the Court – its most senior member – or for some other elder minister that the one to be elected admires and wants to pay homage to.

The Chief Justice is also the 4th in the Presidential Succession Line, when the President of Brazil becomes prevented to be in charge, being preceded by the Vice-President, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, and the President of the Federal Senate, as provided in Article 80 of the Brazilian Constitution.

Current members

Name	Birth	Appointed by	First day	Mandatory retirement	Alma mater
100px Celso de Mello	November 1, 1945 (age ) in Tatuí, São Paulo	José Sarney	August 17, 1989 (serving for )	November 1, 2020	University of São Paulo
100px Marco Aurélio Mello	July 12, 1946 (age ) in Rio de Janeiro	Fernando Collor de Mello	June 13, 1990 (serving for )	July 12, 2021	Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
100px Gilmar Mendes	December 30, 1955 (age ) in Diamantino, Mato Grosso	Fernando Henrique Cardoso	June 20, 2002 (serving for )	December 30, 2030	University of Brasília
100px Ricardo Lewandowski (President of the Court)	May 11, 1948 (age ) in Rio de Janeiro	Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva	March 16, 2006 (serving for )	May 11, 2023	Faculty of Law of São Bernardo do Campo
100px Cármen Lúcia (Vice-president of the Court)	April 19, 1954 (age ) in Montes Claros, Minas Gerais	Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva	June 21, 2006 (serving for )	April 19, 2029	Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais
100px Dias Toffoli	November 15, 1967 (age ) in Marília, São Paulo	Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva	October 23, 2009 (serving for )	November 15, 2042	University of São Paulo
100px Luiz Fux	April 26, 1953 (age ) in Rio de Janeiro	Dilma Rousseff	March 3, 2011 (serving for )	April 26, 2028	Rio de Janeiro State University
100px Rosa Weber	October 2, 1948 (age ) in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul	Dilma Rousseff	December 19, 2011 (serving for )	October 2, 2023	Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
100px Teori Zavascki	August 15, 1948 (age ) in Faxinal dos Guedes, Santa Catarina	Dilma Rousseff	November 29, 2012 (serving for )	August 15, 2023	Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
100px Luís Roberto Barroso	March 15, 1958 (age ) in Vassouras, Rio de Janeiro	Dilma Rousseff	June 26, 2013 (serving for )	March 15, 2033	Rio de Janeiro State University
100px Luiz Edson Fachin	February 8, 1958 (age ) in Rondinha, Rio Grande do Sul	Dilma Rousseff	June 16, 2015 (serving for )	February 8, 2033	Federal University of Paraná

Gallery

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  The Supreme Court in session.

• Rodrigo Janot.JPG

  The Brazilian Prosecutor-General, Rodrigo Janot, is the prosecutor of the Supreme Court and heads the Federal Ministério Público.

• Luis inacio adams.jpg

  The Brazilian Solicitor-General, Luís Inácio Adams, is responsible for the legal defense of the federal government in Supreme Court cases, and heads the office of Attorneys-general at the federal level.

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  Plenary

• Supreme Federal Court.jpg

  Supreme Federal Court at night

• Outubro Rosa (15232835208).jpg

  The Supreme Court lit up in pink for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month on October 1, 2014

See also

• Brazil federal courts
• Tribunal de Justiça

External links

• Official website
• (Portuguese) Photo 360° of Supreme Federal Court - GUIABSB