He helped Lula overturn a graft conviction stemming from Brazil’s sprawling “Car Wash” corruption investigation, getting him freed after 580 days of incarceration. The Supreme Court annulled all convictions of Lula, and ruled in 2021 that the judge overseeing the case had been biased. That allowed Lula to run successfuly for his third, non-consecutive presidential term.
In July, senators examining Zanin’s appointment questioned the lawyer about his ability to remain nonpartisan. A large majority of senators went on to vote in favor of his nomination, making the 47-year-old the youngest justice on the 11-member court.
Lula, who in March called Zanin “his friend” on radio BandNews FM, pedalled back in a later interview. “He was not a friend, he was my lawyer,” Lula told Record TV in July after Zanin’s appointment had been approved by the Senate. “He is an extremely capable person … He is very studious, he is very competent, he is very dedicated and he is very serious. This is the reason why he was chosen.”
That’s a great idea in theory. But you’re pulling from a pool of people who are already at the top of their classes. The only points you assign or deduct on “merit” functionally amount to how tightly they cleave to the people performing the evaluation.
What is odd about a relationship between the people who write the laws and the people who interpret and enforce them? They all come from the same universities, work for the same political parties, fundraise from the same donors, and then go to work in the same city in buildings that are walking distance from one another.
It would be weird if they didn’t have any kind of relationship.
By merit I didn’t mean it would be a simple selection process. It would involve many aspects which wouldn’t fit in a comment. Say, merit, competence, academic achievements, career results, the list goes on. You will always have the argument of “and who polices the police” and so on and to that I’d say the selection process would have to be such that it would account for that to mitigate it somehow.
It is an odd relationship. One where only personal interest plays a role. Their job isn’t to “bend” the interpretation of the law to please their executive friend/ally. It’s like expecting the police to arrest only right wing protesters because left wingers are supporters of the current government and therefore get a free pass. That’s not how the judicial system is meant to work. That to me sounds more like another legislative branch with judicial powers and that’s no bueno my friend, no matter how you spin it.
All these people come out of the same schools and get the same clerking gigs and work at the same white shoe law firms and federal agencies before being repped by a handful of Judiciary Committee Senators to move through a small set of Federal benches. They’re all interchangeably meritable. You won’t find one notably more qualified than the others, by any metric shy of “Did you get a gold star from the ACLU or the Federalist Society? (or their Brazilian equivalents)”
There’s a native prejudice in the appointment process that leans towards prosecutors, because the state values prosecutors more highly than defense attorneys. DAs go on to be AGs go on to be Senators and Ministry/Department of Justice cabinet positions. And from there, they can break into the Federal Bench. Pro Bono defense attorneys aren’t on this track. Criminal attorneys rarely, if ever, get the kind of recognition that prosecutors routinely receive.
How much would have to change in order for a selection process predicated on “merit”?
We’re at a point in which a nationally recognized and respected defense attorney who has regularly argued in front of the highest appellate courts and won landmark cases isn’t qualified to join those judges. How? Why? What are you even using to evaluate these professionals?
It seems as though being a defense attorney is the disqualifying factor. That’s not any kind of meritocracy I recognize.
You came up with your own kind of selection process and you don’t accept it. I can’t argue with that…
I’m presenting hypothetical criteria to demonstrate the problem with an implementation of meritocracy. Merit isn’t an objective measure. It is necessarily in the eye of the beholder.