Nível fluente > Brazil’s Supreme Federal Tribunal 3

A second innovation was the creation in 2004 of a body to keep an eye on the judges. The National Council of Justice has proved to have teeth, traveling around the country and investigating malpractice. It has detected a lot of this in the country's poor north-east: it recently found a judge in Alagoas guilty of a fraud worth more than 63,000 reais ($26,000) against Electrobrás, a state-controlled energy company.

If these trends are reinforced, Brazil's supreme court will start to resemble similar courts elsewhere. Behind the recent public row between the two supreme-court justices was an argument about judicial philosophy, says Joaquim Falcão, a professor of constitutional law at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas. Mr. Barbosa boasted that he considered the consequences of his decisions. Mr. Mendes accused him of ruling differently depending on the social status of those involved in a case. Translated into different language, this was an argument between judicial activism and a more conservative view of a judge's role. This is a cut above the usual debate in and about the supreme court and sounds like progress. But there is still some way to go, and a lot of cases to be culled.

Adapted from: Economist.com