Crisis, impeachment and judicial processes of governability: the stf and the political system stabilization

Abstract

This paper aims at describing the role played by the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) during the impeachment process of former President Dilma Rousseff. From an analytical perspective that couples the political events on the STF’s agenda and the content of judicial rulings, which impacts on the agenda of the impeachment in Congress, this paper assesses STF’s behavior as the body in charge of dealing with the political crisis that resulted in Rousseff being removed from office. It also studies STF’s major decisions affecting the political actors involved in the crisis, from the acceptance of the request for the ex-president impeachment by the Chamber of Deputies to her final removal, ruled by the Senate. Besides evaluating the features of ministers’ arguments and the fundamentals considered in the decisions that indicate that the STF assumed the role of manager of the risks to the country’s political stability, this paper presents the hypothesis that the crisis has exposed a new face of the judicial processes of political disputes submitted to arbitration by the STF, whose purpose will be to reduce political costs in the already deteriorated relationship between executive and legislative powers in order to promote the governability of the country.