A landmark shift unfolded in Mexico on Thursday as a majority of its 32 states approved an overhaul of the country’s judicial system. In a monumental change, thousands of judges would be elected instead of appointed, from local courtrooms to the Supreme Court.
The measure could produce one of the most far-reaching judicial overhauls of any major democracy and has already provoked deep division in Mexico.
Nevertheless, the legislation’s passage into law was practically a foregone conclusion by Thursday as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced his intent to publish the bill on Sunday, on the eve of Mexico’s Independence Day.
“It is a very important reform,” Mr. López Obrador, whose six-year tenure ends at the end of the month, said during his daily news conference. “It’s reaffirming that in Mexico there is an authentic democracy where the people elect their representatives.”
The departing president and his Morena party have championed remaking the court system as a way to curtail graft, influence-peddling and nepotism and to give Mexicans a greater voice. Mr. López Obrador’s successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, will take office on Oct. 1 and has fully backed the plan.
But court workers, judges, legal scholars and opposition leaders argue that it would inadequately address issues such as corruption and instead bolster Mr. López Obrador’s political movement.
Here’s what to know about the sweeping measure.
Why do some Mexicans support the election of judges?
Mexico’s justice system, like other branches of government, has long been plagued by graft and other problems. According to government surveys, 66 percent of Mexicans perceive judges to be corrupt — though official data on how many of them have been punished for corruption is scarce.
In the United States, where voters elect judges in many states, some judges say that judicial appointments can be easily controlled by political whims and that elections can even help increase diversity in the judiciaries. Research suggests, however, that inadequate diversity is an issue both when judges are elected and when they are appointed.
Proponents of the plan say it would reduce corruption and give voters a greater role in a justice system widely regarded as broken. Mr. López Obrador has said that elections would prevent judges from ruling in favor of powerful people to secure favors from them.
“The judge will have a different behavior,” he told reporters this week. “He will be there in that position by the will of the citizens, and will feel free to impart justice — he will have no commitments to anyone.”
There is also the issue of nepotism, which both supporters and opponents of the overhaul agree is a major problem in the court system. A recent assessment found that about 37 percent of judicial officials had at least one family member working in the judiciary (a drop of about 12 percentage points from 2021).
A system in which judges are elected, proponents say, would make it harder for judges to obtain positions in the judiciary through relatives. Instead, they would have to demonstrate their qualifications to voters. Most of the family relationships within the judiciary, however, involve court workers, not judges, who would not be elected.
Finally, the overhaul would sever the judiciary from its oversight body, the Federal Judicial Council. As of now, the head of that council — which, among other duties, appoints federal judges and penalizes them — is also the chief justice of the Supreme Court. That makes the workload impossible, experts say, and it also introduces bias.
“When you have someone who does both roles, inevitably there’s a conflict of interest,” said Sergio López Ayllón, a law professor who has advised institutions such as the Mexican Senate and the Supreme Court.
As an example, Mr. López Ayllón offered Arturo Zaldívar, a former chief of justice and president of the Judicial Council, who earlier this year was accused of using his position to remove and intimidate judges who did not rule the way he wanted. Mr. Zaldívar, who is being investigated by the Supreme Court, has denied the accusations.
Why do others in Mexico oppose the election of judges?
The biggest fears among experts and some citizens is that in the overhaul, judicial independence would be lost and the courts would become highly politicized. Since the measure eliminates the many requirements to become a judge, critics fear that it will open the way for people with only a law degree and a few years of legal experience to run for office.
This is particularly relevant in the district courts, for example, where under the current system prospective judges are appointed after undergoing a series of “very difficult” tests required for a spot, said Adriana García, an expert adviser to Stanford Law School’s Rule of Law Impact lab.
“We’re going from one moment where we’re choosing them based on their merits and abilities to one where we’re choosing based on popularity,” she said.
If one political party controls key branches of government, as Morena does now, the choices of judicial candidates might skew in favor of the party’s interests, critics say. Nominees for top judicial positions could emerge as little more than loyal allies, compromising the impartiality of the courts.
Opponents to the overhaul have also expressed alarm that political parties and illicit funds, including from organized crime groups, would influence the elections.
While the plan prohibits public or private financing of judicial campaigns and bars political parties and public officials from stumping for candidates, Ms. García said this would be difficult to enforce and worried that those with “the most money and most power will put forth their judge.”
Voters would also have the daunting task of getting to know all the candidates. The changes would apply to the 11 justices currently on the Supreme Court, to 1,635 federal judges and magistrates and to more than 5,700 judges at the state and local levels. An average voter might have to sift through anywhere from hundreds to thousands of candidates.
Experts and citizens alike are concerned that the sheer volume of candidates would overwhelm voters who often have limited information about the candidates on the ballot. There’s also growing worry that voting participation could plummet, with citizens either too confused or too disengaged to make an informed choice.
What happens next?
Now that most state legislatures have passed the bill, the lower house of Congress will send it to Mr. López Obrador, and he is expected to publish it in the government’s official gazette. He said he intended to do so on Sunday, a day before Mexico’s Independence Day.
Congress can then make adjustments to federal laws as required by the overhaul, such as eliminating funds for the retirement of justices. The Senate would then issue a call for candidates for the thousands of judgeships nationwide. And Mexico’s electoral agency would have to start organizing the judicial elections. At some point, state legislatures would modify their local constitutions.
The plan is for voters next June to elect all the Supreme Court justices, whose number would be reduced to nine; members of the newly created Disciplinary Tribunal; and about half of the country’s 7,000 judges, with the rest elected in 2027. It is an undertaking that already has been called unrealistic.
“Judicial geography is not the same as electoral geography; ballots have never had so many names before,” said Carla Humphrey, a member of the National Electoral Institute’s governing council.
Some critics of the overhaul had hoped that when Ms. Sheinbaum, who won the presidency in a landslide in June, would replace Mr. López Obrador next month, she would moderate or slow the sweeping changes to the court system. But she has so far shown no intention to do so.
“There is no possibility of reversing the reform,” Ms. Sheinbaum told reporters this month. “That was the decision of the people of Mexico.”
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