In Brazil of 2023, we are not discussing increasing the representation of women on the Supreme Federal Court (STF). On the contrary, we are reducing the already low representation to an even smaller number.
President Lula, once again, will not appoint a woman to the STF, much less a Black woman. After wasting his second consecutive chance within the same year, with only a few months in between, the president will replace Minister Rosa Weber, who is leaving, with yet another man.
The pressure for a Black female jurist to replace Minister Ricardo Lewandowski in July never came from the opposition. Timidly, government supporters protested the nomination of Christiano Zanin. The silence was deafening. Now, for Rosa Weber’s replacement in October, the few who are making noise are being publicly vilified.
What should be a consensual issue among the current president’s supporters is actually becoming a cause of strife. Gregório Duvivier, for example, and all others who supported Lula in 2022 and are now demanding the nomination of a Black woman, are targets of virtual lynching—the good old cancel culture.
It is shameful for the activists who so strongly supported President Lula’s election, primarily on gender and race issues, to now see the STF seat as a bargaining chip. The Supreme Court is not just a mere revision court, and the president has a duty to be transparent with Brazilian society. A minister on the STF is responsible for the most important analyses in the country’s constitutional matters.
However, Lula’s priorities in his nominations will follow the same logic as with Zanin: the new members of the Supreme Court during his term will be the result of a “personal and private decision.” Initially, Zanin’s opinions on the limits of constitutional jurisdiction or any other important legal debate in the country were unknown. Not only was the response to this legitimate doubt a terrible surprise for the president’s supporters, but we are also about to repeat the same anticipated tragedy.
It was President Lula who nominated the second woman to occupy a seat on the STF, Cármen Lúcia, and the third Black man, Joaquim Barbosa. Lula also nominated Ayres Britto as a representative of the Northeast, in a Court predominantly filled with representatives from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Furthermore, the president ensured the election and re-election of Brazil’s first female president—and most likely also ensured her impeachment. It is worth questioning why the reliability of the new Supreme Court members outweighs the president’s own political agendas and those of his support base.
It is crucial to emphasize that when discussing a subject as significant to Brazil’s legal and political landscape as a seat on the constitutional court, “legal competence” is not an isolated value. The president would have the opportunity to fill a void resulting from the deep-seated wounds of Brazil’s slavery era while reinforcing his supposed commitment to gender representation.
The issue of representation, alongside legal competence, is not the only consideration in appointing someone to the Court. Even if the man Lula is considering to replace Rosa Weber is an exceptional legal mind, the work he could perform on the STF would likely differ little from that of a distinguished female jurist or any competent Black individual. Once the threshold of legal knowledge is met, other values should come into play when determining the best appointment.
In other words, the fact that a man is highly competent in the president’s eyes does not negate the potential nomination of a Black female jurist of comparable competence. The value of representation is as valid as the value of competence. In the end, both would deliver similar outcomes in terms of judicial performance. Ultimately, the lack of representation diminishes how deeply rooted concerns in Brazil are interpreted and addressed.
Logically, movements to fill gaps in diversity and representation should occur organically and naturally—not through laws mandating racial or gender characteristics for STF appointments. Therefore, it is essential to scrutinize and understand why the president is not following his political line. Lula’s nomination could address this racial and gender gap in the STF, but instead, it will exacerbate it by replacing a female jurist with a man.
Representation is not a significant issue for movements on the right of the current government. So, if the president’s supporters don’t hold him accountable and break the embarrassing silence over these male STF appointments, no one else will.