Mexico: Supreme Court does not overturn controversial judicial reform

The Supreme Court of Mexico on Tuesday unexpectedly rejected an appeal to annul a controversial reform of the judicial system wanted by the camp of left-wing President Claudia Sheinbaum, sparing the country a major political crisis.

This appeal was filed by two opposition parties, with strong winds against this reform, the cornerstone of which is the election of all judges and magistrates in the country by universal suffrage from June 2025, a world first. A qualified majority of eight judges out of the eleven on the Supreme Court threatened to vote for annulment. But the last minute change of camp by one of them shifted the balance of power.

“The present appeals for unconstitutionality are rejected,” the Court wrote in its judgment after more than five hours of public deliberations. Promulgated in mid-September by former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador after a complex adoption process by the national Parliament and those of a majority of states, the reform is ardently defended by the new President Sheinbaum, inaugurated on the 1st october.

Corruption and nepotism

Largely in the majority in Parliament, the left justifies this reform to fight against “corruption”, “nepotism” and the “privileges” of unelected judges. “I welcome the fact that reason, decency, legality have prevailed,” Senate President Gerardo Fernández Noroña told the press after the Court’s decision.

A draft ruling prepared by one of the Court’s judges, Juan Luis Gonzalez Alcantara, partially annulled the reform by declaring constitutional the election by universal suffrage of the magistrates of the Supreme Court, but not that of lower-ranking judges. To be adopted, this judgment had to be approved by at least eight of the eleven judges of the Supreme Court.

Until Tuesday, only three judges considered close to the left had announced that they would vote against. But against all expectations, they were joined at the start of the hearing by a fourth magistrate, who harshly criticized the reform but refused to declare it contrary to the Mexican Constitution.

“Irresponsible madness”

To cancel the reform “would be to respond to a madness irresponsibly brought to the supreme text (the Constitution), with another equivalent madness,” justified this judge, Alberto Pérez Dayán. This decision removes the possibility of a crisis between the presidency and the judiciary.

The Movement for National Regeneration (Morena, left), in power since 2018, accuses the justice system of being at the service of a conservative elite. The opposition and judicial officials, who have been mobilized for weeks, denounce a challenge to the independence of the judiciary.

The United States – where state judges are elected and their mandates are regularly challenged, unlike federal judges – says this reform threatens its private investments in Mexico, which need legal stability.

At the end of August, the American ambassador in Mexico, Ken Salazar, angered the Mexican government by affirming that the reform would “facilitate the influence of cartels and malicious actors on judges without expertise”, and by speaking of “ major risk for the functioning of democracy in Mexico.

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