Supreme Federal Court
The Supreme Federal Court (, , 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 cases involving exclusively non-constitutional issues, regarding federal laws, the highest court is, by rule, the Superior Court of Justice. 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 (). 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 () 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 Café Filho and Carlos Luz (acting) never nominated a minister. All judicial and administrative meetings of the Supreme Federal Court have been broadcast live on television since 2002. The court is open for the public to watch the meetings. On 8 January 2023, the building was attacked by supporters of the former president, Jair Bolsonaro. Functions Alongside its appeal competence, mostly by the Extraordinary Appeal (), 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 (, or ADI). There are also other mechanisms for reaching the Court directly, such as the Declaratory Action of Constitutionality (, or ADC) and the Direct Action of Unconstitutionality by Omission ( or ADO). Case law 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." Overruling seems to be frequent in SFC jurisprudence: "three years ago when the STF adopted the understanding that defendants who have a conviction upheld by a single appellate court may be sent to jail to begin serving their sentences. (...) The 2016 decision happened largely due to