María Ballesteros, Ph.D. candidate and a Minerva/USIP peace scholar fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, and Andrew O’Donohue, Ph.D. candidate and the Carl J. Friedrich fellow, have published a new article in Foreign Policy.
On Sunday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador signed into law a contentious slate of constitutional amendments aimed at overhauling the country’s judiciary. The key proposal: to elect all judges by popular vote—including justices on Mexico’s Supreme Court.
Mexico has been in turmoil for weeks over the amendments, and 55,000 judicial employees have gone on strike to oppose the changes. The day prior to the Senate’s Sept. 11 vote approving the measures, protesters stormed the legislative chambers, bringing deliberations to an abrupt halt.
In Mexico and abroad, a fierce debate is underway on whether the amendments endanger or enhance democracy. On one hand, the Mexican Bar Association, Inter-American Dialogue, and scholars from Stanford Law School have warned that the amendments pose a grave threat to judicial independence. On the other, López Obrador and his successor, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, have championed the reforms as creating a “true democracy.” “If judges … are elected by the people, where is the authoritarianism?” Sheinbaum asked on social media.
We argue that the real problem with Mexico’s judicial overhaul is not just direct elections for judges but rather the specific design of those elections. The basic idea of electing judges may have democratic appeal among voters. But Mexico’s reforms are poised to deprive these voters of meaningful choices in judicial elections, lock in the ruling party’s power, and harm the livelihoods of ordinary citizens.
Read the full article here.