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Sep 17, 2026
Dino’s review leaves Moraes inquiry—and Mendonça clash—unresolved
The Supreme Court’s impasse is seen from different angles: one account stresses a session consumed by institutional confrontation, while legal analysis focuses on how the unresolved procedural vote could postpone both the Moraes and Mendonça matters.
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) ended its extraordinary session without reaching the central question: whether to open an investigation into Justice Alexandre de Moraes over a Federal Police report concerning his alleged contacts with former banker Daniel Vorcaro.1
The immediate obstacle was procedural. Before considering the merits, the court began debating whether Moraes’ case should be heard together with a separate proceeding involving Justice André Mendonça. The vote stood at four in favor of keeping the cases separate and three in favor of joining them when Justice Flávio Dino requested time to review the file.2 Under STF rules, the request can halt the case for up to 90 consecutive days, although Dino may return it earlier.3
One account of the session portrays the delay as the endpoint of hours of increasingly sharp exchanges among the justices, including disputes over case assignments and the removal of Federal Police director-general Andrei Rodrigues. It says the court “ended the day without deciding whether Alexandre de Moraes will be investigated or not.”1
Legal scholar Lenio Streck, however, emphasizes the narrower unresolved issue: the court has not yet decided the motion on whether to combine the proceedings. “The procedural question has not yet been decided,” he said, arguing that the answer must come before the justices can determine the next step.2 In his assessment, that uncertainty makes a planned September 23 session on Moraes’ request to investigate Mendonça unlikely to proceed.
The session also exposed the personal strain behind the procedural dispute. Dino said the justices no longer had conditions to deliberate because “the climate is only going to get worse.”3 Separately, commentator Rodrigo Constantino promoted a program focused on the Moraes trial and purported new developments involving Master, reflecting continuing public attention to the case.
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For now, both accounts converge on the practical outcome: no decision on an inquiry, no final ruling on the cases’ format, and no firm timetable for resumption.