Nowadays, in the Brazilian legal system, freedom of expression is in danger and judicial censorship is imposed in many different ways. Among them, the presumed and punitive damages awarded over journalists and other citizens for violating someone s reputation on the basis of mere negligence even when speech about public affairs is at stake. Powerful people, politicians, and corporations go to court to silence the criticism and generate self-censorship. The Brazilian Superior Court of Justice does not oppose this restriction on freedom of expression as far as its jurisprudence assumes that reputation has a preferred position in the Brazilian law. This dissertation seeks a solution for that issue. The real malice doctrine, construed in the American law since the Supreme Court s ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964, is a powerful device to protect the freedom of expression in the United States, granting the speech a preferred position when public measures are at stake. The dissertation tries to identify the tools and mechanisms adopted by the real malice doctrine and make them work in a civil law jurisdiction as the Brazilian legal system. It proposes a legal reform in the Brazilian law by submitting a new statute containing legal rules to protect the freedom of expression based on the real malice doctrine. The thesis also exhorts the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court to exercise its constitutional powers to grant effective protection to the freedom of expression and makes to all Brazilian judges and courts a suggestion to consider the adoption of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights jurisprudence on freedom of speech, and of the press.