1/5 The Court, the Text, and the Struggle for Constitutional Fidelity in Brazil verfassungsblog.de/the-court-the-text-and-the-struggle-for-constitutional-fidelity-in-brazil/ Fernando Leal Thomaz Pereira This article belongs to the debate » Bolsonarism at the Ballot Box 26 September 2022 The Brazilian Supreme Court is currently a polarizing institution. Multiple institutional features empower it to control the constitutionality of federal, state, and municipal norms both in the course of concrete and abstract review cases. It is also characterized by the endorsement by its justices of a disparage mixture of constitutional supremacy doctrines and constitutional interpretation theories freewheelingly deployed in ways that maximize its ability to decide any political dispute that comes to its attention. As such the Court stands in the complicated position of being criticized for both its actions and its inaction, while it is called to adjudicate demands by actors from all points of the political spectrum, and as it has recently come to face unprecedent authoritarian attacks And here is the crux of the Brazilian current constitutional situation: the anti-institutional speech that has been put forward by Bolsonaro and his supporters has in some cases, on its face, not been against the Constitution per se. It is presented as if it were against institutions, among which the Supreme Court, that, according to them, while performing their functions in our checks and balances system, have been violating the Constitution themselves. It is as such that they invoke outrageous readings of the constitutional text that would empower the executive to call on the Armed Forces against the perceived abuse by the Court. A situation that puts the Court in the difficult position of having to mobilize support in defense of its authoritative power to interpret the Constitution from the very public that perceives it as frequently disregarding the limits, mainly textual ones, that the Constitution imposes on itself. A difficult task even at the best of times, but a particularly challenging one in Brazil’s currently politically polarized context. The Brazilian Supreme Court and constitutional text In many ways this problematic situation results from the fact that, over the last few decades, the Court has positioned itself as an institution willing to do what is necessary to “solve” any salient problem put before it by any political actor. In some cases, what it is required is for the Court to make good on the constitutional promise of making Brazil a more free, just, and solidary society; in others, it is to enforce rules that limit what