Last month, Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president, was convicted of plotting a coup. He received 27 years in prison and was barred from running for office again.
That might have been the end of it. The evidence against Bolsonaro was unusually strong. The coup plan was even detailed in writing.
But in the weeks since, Bolsonaro’s supporters have been staging protests. Some members of Congress have discussed an amnesty bill to free him; that prospect has prompted its own protests. If the purpose of the trial was “the healing of wounds,” as one Supreme Court justice put it, Brazil’s wounds have a lot of healing to go.
Bolsonaro’s trial is an example of a problem facing courts around the globe. Their job is to uphold the law. They do so, in part, in the service of stabilizing democracy. A trusted neutral arbiter can prevent cases from spiraling into violence or political chaos.
But in an environment in which polarization and institutional mistrust run deep, even independent court rulings may no longer help stabilize societies anymore. In some cases, they might actually be destabilizing.
Brazil, France, Turkey and more
Criminal prosecutions of high-profile politicians have taken place in recent years across a diverse range of countries: Brazil, Turkey, Romania, France, South Korea and the United States, among others. What’s striking is how similarly they’re perceived, regardless of the independence of the courts in question.
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In Turkey, the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, was arrested on accusations of corruption and terrorism, just as he was becoming a serious challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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In France, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen was found guilty of embezzlement and barred from running for office in the 2027 presidential election. Polls predict she would easily beat President Emmanuel Macron.
International rankings of judicial independence place France much higher than Turkey, where critics have long accused Erdogan of using state institutions to undermine political rivals. But the reactions from those hurt by the ruling sounded identical.
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“We are faced with a coup attempt against our next president,” said the head of Turkey’s main opposition party.
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French democracy “has been executed,” Le Pen’s protégé lamented.
In the current environment, it’s not easy for many to tell the difference between court decisions that are political and those that are independent but deliver an outcome they don’t like.
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