Nowadays, the judicial branch is, in the Brazilian legal system, the most important source of censorship. Despite the recognition of freedom of expression as a fundamental right by the Brazilian Constitution and the Inter-American Convention of Human Rights and the complete prohibition of imposing censorship as a way to enforce freedom of expression, the Brazilian Supreme Court (Federal Supreme Court) has been ruling as according to the law the decisions made by inferior courts imposing censorship. One of the aims of this dissertation is to verify if it is legitimate that judges impose censorship in case expressions violate the honor or the privacy of others. The decisions taken by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court of the Argentinian Nation and the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court about judicial censorship were studied and described to check how they interpret the norms about it, what exactly they consider censorship and if they agree with it when imposed by judges as according to the law. Considering that censorship means the complete suppression of freedom of expression, the dissertation identified and compared the normative standards and the legal argument patterns adopted by these courts when ruling about cases involving the prohibition of free speech. In addition, the dissertation went through a study of the ground and philosophical foundations of the freedom of expression and a critical analysis of the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court rulings regarding censorship decisions taken by judicial branch members.