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Mexico remakes its entire judicial system as states back vast overhaul

Ruling Morena Party senator Gerardo Fernandez Norona, center, and members of Mexico’s Senate celebrate after they passed the controversial judicial reform at the Senate’s chamber in Mexico City on Sept. 11, 2024. Mexico became the world’s first country to allow voters to elect judges at all levels on Wednesday, after protesters invaded the upper house and suspended debate on the issue. (Cesar Sanchez/AFP/Getty Images/TNS) (Cesar Sanchez/AFP)
By Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, James Wagner and Alan Yuhas New York Times

MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s states swiftly moved to remake the country’s entire judicial system on Thursday, approving an amendment to the Constitution that would be the most far-reaching judicial overhaul ever attempted by a large democracy.

The measure, which would replace the current, appointment-based system with one in which voters elect judges, would put Mexico onto an untested course whose consequences for the courts and the country are nearly impossible to predict.

Proponents of the plan argue it would reduce corruption and give voters a greater role in a justice system widely regarded as broken. Critics of the overhaul accuse the Mexican government, which proposed and pushed for the changes, of endangering the rule of law by politicizing the courts, giving Mexico’s ruling party greater control over judges and eroding the country’s checks and balances.

The overhaul could see thousands of judges removed from their jobs, from those in local courtrooms to the chief justice of the Supreme Court. And it would drastically restructure a major branch of government responsible for meting out justice across the third-most populous country in the Americas.

The logistics alone are daunting: The country would need to implement new elections for thousands of judges, starting next year.

Mexico’s Senate passed the amendment Wednesday. And by Thursday morning, a majority of state legislatures had approved the amendment, ensuring that it would reach the desk of the outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He has long championed the measure, which has for weeks brought thousands of people into the streets, in opposition and support, and drawn warnings from the U.S. and Canadian ambassadors and legal experts.

Once the amendment was approved by a majority of the 32 state legislatures on Thursday (20 have so far approved), López Obrador said he would publish it on Sunday, the eve of Mexico’s Independence Day. By publishing it in the government’s official gazette, the president makes the amendment law.

The amendment, which would not immediately take effect, would reshuffle the courts at every level.

In June 2025, voters would elect all the members of the Supreme Court, the members of an oversight tribunal and about half of Mexico’s total of 7,000 judges. The remainder would be chosen in an election in 2027.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.