The Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) and the Public Measures for Covid-19 Prevention and Treatment

This article analyses the case-law of the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) in relation to the policies for the prevention and treatment of Covid-19. Brazil is a country with high volume of litigation and the STF has been an important political actor since the 1990s. It would thus be expected that key decisions in relation to the public policies against the pandemic would be challenged or made by the STF. Moreover, there has been constant disagreements and disputes between the federal government and local state governments regarding the responses to the pandemic in Brazil. It is the role of the STF to resolve conflicts between central and local authorities. Lastly, the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has refused to acknowledge the gravity of the pandemic and the importance of public health measures to control it. This increased the pressure on the STF to reduce the powers of the President or to oblige him to implement policies for preventing the aggravation of the health crisis. In sum, to understand the role of the STF during the Covid-19 pandemic is key for comprehending the governmental actions and omissions during this period. With the support of data science and artificial intelligence, the relevant STF decisions from Jan 2019 to Sep 2021 were systematically and exhaustively collected. These decisions were organized and classified into the following topics: social distancing, miscellaneous responses to Covid-19, face covering, requisition of private property, ICU beds, vaccination, and access to information. In total, 253 judgments were included for analysis. The analysis of these decisions allow us to draw, with nuance and in detail, the following conclusions: an important share of the STF´s decisions were preliminary injunctions and made by a single Justice; the Court sought to protect the capacity of local governments to respond to the pandemic; some decisions show a critical attitude of the Court in relation to the federal government; in many cases there is an explicit overlap between the formal assessment of which federal entity (the federal government, state governments or municipal governments) has the authority to decide an issue and the substantive analysis of which policy should be implemented; and the STF has been hesitant to order complex measures for responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. These finding allow a better understanding of the possibilities and the limits of a Court to control a government that it (the Court) sees as incapable or unwilling to implement the necessary measures for tackling the pandemic. Authors: Daniel Wei Liang Wang; Ana Luiza Arruda; Bruno da Cunha de Oliveira; Ezequiel Fajreldines dos Santos; Gabriela Tiemi Moribe; Leonardo Nochang Heck; Luiz Fernando Gomes Esteves; Marcela Pereira Pedro