Supreme Federal Court
supreme court of Brazil
The Supreme Federal Court (Portuguese: Supremo Tribunal Federal, [suˈpɾẽmu tɾibuˈnaw fedeˈɾaw], abbreviated STF) is the supreme court (court of last resort) of Brazil, serving primarily as the country's constitutional court. It is the highest court of law in Brazil for constitutional issues and its rulings cannot be appealed. On cases involving exclusively non-constitutional issues, regarding federal laws, the highest court is, by rule, the Superior Court of Justice.
History
The current court was preceded by the House of Appeals of Brazil (Casa de Suplicação do Brasil), which was inaugurated during the colonial era on 10 May 1808, the year that the Portuguese royal family (the House of Braganza) arrived in Rio de Janeiro after fleeing to Brazil.
The Brazilian proclamation of Independence and the adoption of the Imperial Constitution in 1824 preceded the establishment of the Supreme Court of Justice (Supremo Tribunal de Justiça) in 1829, which served as the Brazilian Empire's supreme court. With the fall of the monarchy and Brazil's first Republican Constitution, the current court was established.
Although the constitutional norms that regulated the creation of the court allowed Deodoro da Fonseca, Brazil's first president, to nominate an entirely new court, the president chose to nominate as the first members of the Supreme Federal Court the ministers who were then serving as members of the imperial court that preceded it.
Two hundred members have served on the court. The Constitution of 1891 provided that the court would have 15 members. When Getúlio Vargas came into power, the number of members was reduced to 11.
“Supreme Federal Court” enters the record as supreme court of Brazil. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Supreme, Federal and Court can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q519138. VIAF identifies the subject as 130744229. The Library of Congress control number is n80036760. Authority coordinates are -15.802, -47.862. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1808, 1824, 1829 and 1891.
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This entry incorporates text from “Supreme Federal Court” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.