Brazil's chief justice, Edson Fachin, told a room of judges in Rio that there are Black women worthy of the Supreme Court's open seat, a public message to Lula, who alone can nominate. The seat has been empty since Barroso retired and the Senate rejected Jorge Messias in April.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Edson Fachin, the chief justice of Brazil’s Supreme Court, used a public speech on Friday, Nov. 13, to tell President Lula what kind of person should fill the court’s open seat. Closing the 9th National Meeting of Black Judges in Rio de Janeiro, Fachin said that if “whoever has the right to define the next vacancy of the Brazilian Supreme Court” were in the room, he would know “there are Black women judges worthy of this place, to honor Brazil and the Brazilian people,” according to g1, TV Globo and Folha de S.Paulo. The audience gave him an ovation.
Only one person has that right. The seat has been empty since Justice Luís Roberto Barroso retired early in October 2025. Lula nominated his attorney general, Jorge Messias, and in April the Senate voted him down 42 to 34, the first rejection of a Supreme Court nominee in 132 years. Lula, re-elected in October to a fourth term, has not named anyone else, and Senate President Davi Alcolumbre is already weighing sending Messias back without a hearing if the name returns. The same week, a letter organized by the group Elas Pedem Vista and backed by 30 other collectives asked Lula to give the open seat to a Black woman, and more than 40 organizations launched a petition for four women on the court, Folha reported.
Lula’s own record explains the pressure. In his third term he named Cristiano Zanin, his personal lawyer in the Lava Jato cases, and Flávio Dino, his justice minister, before choosing Messias. All three are men from his inner circle. Cármen Lúcia is the only woman among the 10 sitting justices, and no Black woman has served in the court’s 135 years.
Why it matters
Under Brazil’s Constitution, the president nominates and the Senate confirms. The court’s job is to judge, not to campaign for the profile of its next colleague. In the United States, it would be hard to imagine the Chief Justice standing at a podium to tell the White House what kind of nominee to send. In Brazil, the chief justice did it to applause, and in the same speech called for “a reform with the Judiciary, not a reform against Justice,” at a time when Congress is debating limits on the court. For Americans, this court is not a distant institution: it shut down X in Brazil for 39 days in 2024, and one of its members, Alexandre de Moraes, is under U.S. sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act.
A court shaping its own bench
The speech also comes from the justice who controls the most delicate case in the building. Since September, Fachin has kept the Banco Master investigation in the presidency’s office, after Justice André Mendonça lifted secrecy on a Federal Police report that described Moraes as an interlocutor of the jailed banker Daniel Vorcaro. The police later produced reports on Moraes, Toffoli and Nunes Marques, and the full court still has to decide whether to investigate its own members. Whoever takes the empty seat could cast a vote in that decision. A chief justice who manages that case and now helps write the job description for the next justice is shaping the bench that will judge it, the same week that Moraes took the presiding chair while the court sat on his case.
The record
What is documented: Fachin’s words, recorded by TV Globo and reported by g1 and Folha; the vacancy since October 2025; the Senate’s 42-to-34 rejection of Messias in April; the letter from Elas Pedem Vista and the petition by more than 40 groups. What is not: Fachin did not name a candidate, and there is no public record that Lula asked the court for advice. Lula has not announced a nominee.
The question raised by Friday’s speech is not who the next justice should be. It is who gets to choose. Under a regime that came to power in a 2022 election millions of Brazilians still dispute, the Supreme Court has grown used to deciding what can be said, who can run and who goes to prison. Now its chief justice is lobbying, in public, over who joins it, and the room cheered. The Senate, the only body that can say no to the Lula regime on this, has already done so once this year.
The Watch Post Daily will continue to follow this story. Sources: g1 and TV Globo; Folha de S.Paulo (report by Anna Júlia Lopes and the Painel column); Estadão.
Featured image: Chief Justice Edson Fachin greets Lula at his swearing-in, Sept. 29, 2025 by Lula Oficial, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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