The News
Mexico’s Senate voted to approve outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s controversial judicial overhaul, which will see nearly all judges elected by popular vote.
The plan has sparked mass protests across the country, and on Tuesday lawmakers were briefly forced to interrupt debating the plan as demonstrators stormed the Senate building.
Critics say the move will erode democratic norms, allow political influence over the judiciary, and consolidate power for the president’s party. Supporters of the legislation argue it will help root out widespread corruption.
SIGNALS
President risks tarnishing his legacy and burdening his protégé
Backers of López Obrador fear the judicial legislation risks clouding his legacy as a champion of the poor, the Los Angeles Times reported. One analyst said his proposals were motivated by a “sense of revenge” against the courts after they struck down his past efforts to radically expand executive power. But the impact of the divisive overhaul now falls on his protégé, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who will have to implement the changes. “She could have started on a very strong note, first woman president — one with a landslide — immensely popular party, economy growing, strong currency,” a Mexican consultant told Reuters. “But this move... has made it much more difficult.”
The ‘faceless court’ experiment has largely failed in the region
One key element of the overhaul is the introduction of a “faceless court” made up of judges whose identities are kept secret while presiding over cases of drug trafficking, organized crime, and terrorism. Since the 1990s, such courts have been introduced in Perù, El Salvador, Brazil, and Colombia. But they’ve often done more harm than good, El País argued, resulting in “thousands of people arbitrarily detained and sentenced, suspicions of torture and impunity and allegations of systematic human rights violations.” The measures in other countries have also failed to protect judges, a law professor said.
Mexico’s overhaul is unprecedented for most major democracies
Mexico is now in “uncharted territory,” a columnist noted in El País, while one analyst wrote this “will be remembered as the most important day for the judiciary since 1994,” when modern Mexico held its first free and fair elections. The judicial overhaul is one of the most far-reaching of any major democracy in recent decades, The New York Times added, as few countries elect their judges by popular vote. The US is an exception, for state judges, but some legal scholars argue it shouldn’t serve as a model, because of its “politicized” judiciary. Bolivia has a similar system to Mexico’s, and it’s been widely criticized for empowering political leaders to get their supporters into the judiciary and target their opponents through the courts.