Mexico: Controversial Justice Reform Approved

Mexico has approved a broad justice reform that also includes popular election of judges. The reform sparked widespread public protests, and the Senate vote was postponed due to an invasion by demonstrators.

In the end, the reform sought by outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in his final month in office was passed by a two-thirds vote. President-in-waiting Claudia Sheinbaum also expressed satisfaction with the revision, which she said reflects the will of the people.

“The regime of corruption and privilege is a thing of the past, true democracy and rule of law is being built,” Sheinbaum wrote on X social media.

For the opposition, however, this is a sad page in Mexico’s history and a reform that risks serious democratic and economic repercussions. The United States and Canada have also said there are risks to democracy.

More than 6000 Mexican judges currently serving in local courts and the Supreme Court will be eliminated and replaced by individuals elected by citizens. The reform would also reduce the number of Supreme Court justices from 11 to 9, shorten their terms to 12 years, eliminate the minimum age of 35, and cut the required experience in half to five years. An unprecedented situation in America, Tania Groppi of the University of Siena explains to Italian newspaper Avvenire: “With the exception of Bolivia, which limits the system to the Supreme Court, in no other country is the judiciary appointed by popular vote. Because judges don’t have to answer to the voters, but act autonomously based on their own skills.”

Obrador, who argues that the law was created to fight corruption, was also opposed by a majority of the judges themselves, and it is possible that the Supreme Court will raise the constitutionality issue.