Updated September 11, 2024 at 04:37 AM ET
MEXICO CITY 鈥� Mexico鈥檚 Senate on Wednesday narrowly passed sweeping changes to the courts that include having judges elected by the public rather than appointed, in a major and controversial set of constitutional reforms.
The approval came hours after hundreds of protesters broke into Mexico's Senate, forcing the body to take a temporary recess. The proposed reforms have led judges and other judicial staff to strike and protest, in what鈥檚 become one of Mexico鈥檚 biggest constitutional debates in years.
Here are the main things to understand about the reforms and why they are so controversial.
The government vows to root out court corruption
For nearly a year, outgoing President Andr茅s Manuel L贸pez Obrador has been promoting a plan to remake the federal judiciary and Claudia Sheinbaum, the president-elect, due to take over in October, backs the reforms. Both accuse the courts of gross corruption and say their changes are crucial.
The biggest proposal changes how federal judges are selected. Instead of working their way up the judiciary, the governing party wants them to be elected by popular vote. Like presidents and lawmakers, the governing party reasoned, judges from the Supreme Court on down to local courts will have to run for office.
The plan also includes reforms like making sure no judicial worker makes more than the president.
Mexico鈥檚 June elections handed Sheinbaum the victory and congressional supermajority needed to amend the Constitution.
L贸pez Obrador and his protege Sheinbaum say this will make the judiciary answer to the people instead of big business or organized crime.
After the lower house of Congress passed the reform 359-135, congressman Ricardo Monreal celebrated.
鈥淲e believe that we will end nepotism, corruption, influence peddling, the conflict of interest, the sale of justice to the highest bidder,鈥� he said.
The judiciary is up in arms
Judges and judicial staff since Aug. 19.
Last week, they formed picket lines in front of federal courthouses and just as the Mexican Congress was set to begin debating the measure, they surrounded the lower bodies鈥� headquarters in Mexico City to block the session.
鈥淒emocracy is in danger," Jos茅 Fernando Migues Hern谩ndez, a Mexican judiciary worker, .
What鈥檚 more, federal courts had issued three injunctions in an attempt to stop the reforms.
But governing party lawmakers worked around the protesters and injunctions, saying they were an infringement of their constitutional rights, and they pressed on. Instead of meeting at Congress, they announced they would debate at a gym outside Mexico City. That鈥檚 where legislators from the lower house approved the raft of measures.
This has been tried before
Under its 1857 Constitution, Mexico actually used to elect its judges, according to M贸nica Castillejos-Arag贸n, who clerked in Mexico's Supreme Court and now teaches comparative law at University of California, Berkeley.
When the framers of the current constitution, which was passed in 1917, discussed the judiciary they called electing judges an 鈥渋nexplicable aberration.鈥� They believed that elected judges led to corruption, so they reasoned that unlike the other two branches of government, the judiciary should be above politics.
鈥淭he framers expressed the need to establish an independent judicial power with security of tenure,鈥� she says.
As the country took steps toward democracy in the 1990s, it also began appointing judges the way the United States does at the federal level. (Some U.S. states elect local judges.) And in the early 2000鈥檚, nearly 80 years after it became independent on paper, the court finally began issuing landmark opinions.
鈥淔or the very first time in history, the Mexican judges were able to interpret and expand the scope of the rights already recognized in the Mexican Constitution,鈥� Castillejos-Arag贸n says.
In recent years, the courts have struck down key policies of the president. For instance, in April 2023, the that the National Guard 鈥� a large paramilitary force created by President L贸pez Obrador to patrol the country 鈥� could not remain under military command.
Castillejos-Arag贸n says the new reforms might put in danger hard-fought independence that allowed the judiciary to check the presidency. She believes the current leadership is reacting to decisions like that National Guard ruling: The executive, now armed with a supermajority, wants to make sweeping changes without the courts getting in its way.
The only big democracy to elect judges at the federal level by popular vote is Bolivia, says Julio R铆os, who studies judiciaries at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. According to R铆os, the Bolivian reform, instituted in 2009, did diversify the courts but it did not make them any less corrupt. He says it just politicized the courts and weakened the public鈥檚 confidence in them.
However, according to constitutional lawyer Juan Carlos Gonz谩lez Cancino, Mexico鈥檚 changes are necessary.
He says the federal judiciary is corrupt. Big tax cases or business cases get decided with a phone call or a bag of money, he says. In his mind, this is not about democracy. It's about factions of the Mexican elite fighting for power and the money that power begets.
鈥淏ut that ends because this reform destroys that power structure,鈥� he says.
Ultimately, he says, it doesn鈥檛 matter what the courts think about these reforms. The Mexican people spoke loud and clear when they handed the government the supermajority needed to reform the Constitution.
Copyright 2024 NPR
