Abstract
The political process of nominating the ministers of the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) is still little known by the specialized literature. Is this a process that follows the logic of coalition presidentialism? Or is it a space for bureaucratic insulation? This article seeks to answer these questions. In addition to press reports, the main documentary source of this investigation consists of testimonies collected by the FGV’s Oral History project (1988-2013). The article is structured in three sections. The first observes the legal and political procedures of a process of appointing a minister to the STF. The second is subdivided into subsections that address the trajectories of the ministers appointed by five presidents: Itamar Franco, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer. The third section relates the data found by the investigation to the literature dealing with the bases of Brazilian coalition presidentialism and “bureaucratic isolation”. It is concluded that the indications of ministers to the STF do not operate in a single way, but in four different articulations: internal, bargain, symbolic and insulated. These indications follow their own, hybrid logic, simultaneously political and technical, and respond to the demands of the conjuncture.
Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF; coalition presidentialism; bureaucratic insulation; Judiciary Power