The legislation proposes altering the status of 7,000 judges, up to the Supreme Court level, who would be elected by popular vote.
It also reduces the number of Supreme Court judges from 11 to nine, caps term length at 12 years, halves the necessary work experience to five years, and abolishes a minimum age requirement of 35.
López Obrador—often known by his initials AMLO—said he would sign and publish the constitutional change on Sept. 15.
Francisca Pou Giménez, a senior researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), said the reforms put Mexico on the same track as Venezuela, where she said “the judiciary was subordinated at the beginning by chavismo, with profound, long-lasting damage to democracy, up to this day.”
‘Turning Point’ in Mexican History
Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, a journalist and political analyst, said, “We might have the obligation of remembering Sept. 11 as a turning point in Mexico’s democratic history.”María Amparo Hernández Chong Cuy, a circuit judge in Mexico, said in the same discussion that the way the reforms were pushed through was very “worrisome.”
She said the Mexican government had “rushed” the whole process and suspected that the process of choosing candidates for the election of hundreds of federal judges would also be rushed.
Half of the judges would be elected in an extraordinary election in June 2025 and the other half in another poll in 2027.
Amparo said the question of who gets on the ballot would be “a political decision taken by political bodies.”
She said incumbent judges like her had been offered a direct place on the ballot, but she had no doubt they would be painted as the “villains” and that the “possibilities of winning with all this adversity were very low.”
Pou Giménez said the “radical” plan to put all judges’ positions dependent on the popular vote was “definitely designed to weaken and subordinate the judiciary to the political majorities of the day.”
She told The Epoch Times: “It is controversial because it clearly tries to eliminate checks and balances on the executive and the legislative [branches], preparing Mexico for unconstrained majority rule in the name of ’the people.'”
The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, has said the election of judges by popular vote constituted “a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy.”
But why is it perceived as a risk in Mexico, but not in America, where judges are also elected in many U.S. states?
‘Not Comparable’ to US
Pou Giménez says that the position of state judges in the U.S. is not comparable to the position of the Mexican judges.“U.S. state judges are voted in districts on the basis of individual candidacies, and people have a chance to get to know their profiles, supervise their performance, and hold them accountable.”
“It is the jury who decides on the facts, not the judge,” she said. “By contrast, Mexican judges and magistrates have lots of powers ... it is them and not a jury who decides, within systems without strong stare decisis [legal precedents].”
Pou Giménez said the reforms in Mexico would completely replace the entire judiciary—except for military tribunals, bureaucratic tribunals, and land courts—in just three years.
“The only country that has elected judges in Latin America is Bolivia, and election is only for members of the three apex courts. The Mexican reform is incomparably more radical,” she said.
“The act of voting will be meaningless since names will mean nothing to people, who will likely select the judges sponsored by the executive,” she added.
They added: “Changes in judicial selection and term limits could affect the timing and consistency of legal decisions, while international concerns may impact investor confidence and trade relations. These shifts may require businesses to adapt their legal strategies and risk management approaches.”
López Obrador said the reforms would create a more just and transparent judiciary.
During a press conference on Sept. 11, he said: “It’s incredibly important to put an end to corruption and impunity. We are going to move forward in Mexico, and we are going to set an example for the world.”
Mexico’s incoming president, Claudia Sheinbaum, also from the Morena party and a close ally of López Obrador, praised the new legislation.
Claims of Corruption ‘Exaggerated’
But Pou Giménez said the claim that many judges were corrupt was “exaggerated and unsupported by empirical data.”“There is a measure of corruption in the judiciary, to be sure ... but the reform is not based on any diagnosis,” she said.
“There has been not the slightest effort to assess and evaluate problems and solutions,” she added.
Pou Giménez said the most corrupt institutions in Mexico were the police and the prosecutorial offices, neither of whom would be affected by the reforms.
“The reform will leave state judiciaries and a federal judiciary weaker and more prone to corruption. The reform does the opposite it should do, were it really interested in curbing corruption.”