Mexico’s judicial reforms just approved last month in Parliament will have long-lasting repercussions for the nation. These changes mean that all members of judicial branches – from judges and magistrates to Supreme Court members – will now be elected by the public from June 2025 onwards, rather than professionally appointed.
While these changes caused public uproar, including an ongoing national strike by federal judiciary workers, newly-elected President Claudia Sheinbaum, who is also from the ruling Morena party, will press ahead with the reform.
This decision was first introduced by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), Mexico’s departing President; it was justified as a key policy to combat corruption in Mexico’s legislative branch. Thanks to record high approval ratings, AMLO’s party had few issues getting enough political support for the reform.
TalkingDrugs spoke with legal and human rights experts who believe that this reform was made to entrench the ruling coalition’s power over the judiciary, removing its ability to hold the state accountable to crimes or block the expansion of its power.
The lead up to the judicial reform
Summarising AMLO’s presidency and the background for the judicial reform is complicated. His premiership produced mixed results for Mexico: while he indeed succeeded in reducing national poverty and improving wages well beyond inflation, violence remained a constant and brutal reality. His presidency was the bloodiest in Mexico’s modern history: over 170,000 murders happened during his six year term, including 47 journalists who reported on cartel violence and corruption. The 2024 elections were also the deadliest ever, with dozens of candidates, their families and friends murdered before 2 June 2024.
For much of his tenure, AMLO massively expanded the military’s power under the guise of fighting corruption. While the military has been repeatedly used to curtail organised criminal violence since the beginning of the millennium, its responsibilities have exponentially grown: the military now builds and manages civil infrastructure projects from telecommunications to trainlines, having also taken over normal policing and National Guard duties across states and towns. Its operating budget is three times larger than the total expenditure of the Ministry of Health.
Bringing the judicial under the political
Crucially, the Supreme Court and other judiciary agents have been essential blocks to the congressional expansions of military powers: just last year, the Mexican Supreme Court deemed AMLO’s request to transfer the National Guard’s control from civilian to military authority unconstitutional. And while the Supreme Court is attempting to challenge the constitutionality of the judicial reform, it’s unclear whether they will be able to.
Stephanie Brewer, Director for Mexico at human rights advocacy organisation WOLA, told TalkingDrugs that Morena’s judicial reform collapses the judiciary’s independence.
“López Obrador had grown frustrated by the Supreme Court having blocked some of his flagship legal reforms. So, what we have now is a reform that weakens the judiciary’s ability to be a check on the executive and legislative branches,” she said.
“The reform of the judiciary should be read on par with other reforms, such as… the National Guard [integration] into the Armed Forces, to be governed by military jurisdiction, carry out crime investigations and, therefore, be in direct contact with people,” the litigation team from México Unido Contra la Delincuencia (MUCD), an organisation advocating for democratic accountability, told TalkingDrugs.
“In other words, while the reform of the judiciary will have the effect of weakening the civilian courts, the military courts will be strengthened,” they added.
What the reform will mean in practice
In practice, the judicial reform will open all federal judges, magistrates and even Supreme Court members’ positions for election; interested candidates must be affiliated to a political party. Instead of a selection process based on merit or experience, it will be done through party appointment or random selection from political candidacy lists.
The reform would also reduce the number of Supreme Court judges from eleven to nine; it will enable the appointment of anonymous judges to rule on cases related to organised crime, among other changes. Interestingly, the reform will also create “hooded judges” to preside over cases against organised crime, ensuring magistrate’s anonymity and protection, preventing attacks and the disruption of legal processes.
According to WOLA, the ruling coalition’s comfortable majority in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies means they will have multiple opportunities to influence magisterial processes, from candidate selection to their evaluation and disciplining. The judiciary would effectively be open to unprecedented political interference.
This reform comes at a crucial time: judicial elections will happen next year in June 2025, meaning half of all existing seats will be up for grabs. With no regulation yet in place to determine how the elections will work and no clarity on whether existing judges will be able to defend their seats as independent candidates or not, much remains unclear about the future.
What about those in or awaiting trials?
What is also unclear is the fate of all those currently navigating the Mexican criminal justice system. In Mexico, arbitrary pre-trial detention remains a common practice: of the 250,000 people incarcerated in Mexico, over 88,000 are in pre-trial detention. Of those in pre-trial detention, half are in mandatory pre-trial detention.
Despite calls for its abolishment, pre-trial detention remains an integral part of criminal justice responses and is compulsory for certain crimes under the Mexican constitution; this includes crimes against health, like drug production, possession and trafficking. The list of crimes with compulsory pre-trial detention has grown during AMLO’s presidency, and is expected to expand further under Sheinbaum.
“The electoral process will delay the resolution of their cases as judges whose positions are up for elections will have to campaign, wait for the results of election day as well as the administrative procedures to appoint of the new judges for their respective jurisdictional bodies,” MUCD’s litigation team told TalkingDrugs.
MUCD also pointed out that those whose criminal trials are still at an oral evidence stage will have to restart their trials if their court-appointed judges are not successfully re-elected.
The politicisation of Mexican judges and other judicial members risks not only forces them to engage in political campaigning, it can extend the legal limbo for those in pre-trial detention or awaiting trial. With some people already in pre-trial detention for over five years, more delays will feel like a lifetime.
Will government agents be held accountable to crimes?
A report by the United Nations’ Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions highlighted in 2023 that the Mexican Armed Forces, National Guard and State and municipal agencies were all frequently implicated in arbitrary detentions and use of excessive force; it noted the nation lacked a system of civilian and independent accountability to prevent and challenge these arrests.
The country has made efforts to improve this: in 2014, Mexico amended laws to ensure military members who committed crimes against civilians were tried in civilian courts. While celebrated then, the latest judicial reform could hamper efforts for accountability: with the military so connected to political elites, and judicial officials soon to be dependent on political support from these same elites, the state’s legal accountability will be seriously questioned.
High levels of organised criminal actions, violence and deaths make the Mexican state’s task of maintaining public order very challenging. However, its approach since the turn of the millennium has been to increasingly militarise the state, turning over more and more power to the military to deal with security issues within and across Mexican states.
While the Government has conceded some reforms over the years, state-led violence has not stopped; the military is matching and surpassing cartels’ brutality, justifying their use of forces as necessary for public order. The recent judicial reforms will give them legal immunity to proceed with no restraints.
“The Armed Forces have been defended as an institution incapable of harming civilians. When it does, the State creates a narrative that criminalised the injured civilians, justifying their need for force,” MUCD told TalkingDrugs.
“It’s going to be harder for judges to act impartially when it comes to members of the State itself, especially in sensitive cases. This is the opposite of what’s needed to advance accountability and the rule of law in Mexico,” as Brewer put it.
While the judicial reform supposedly increases the judiciary’s accountability by having them elected rather than appointed, concerns on their independence are very legitimate. The government’s super-majority means it will be able to control not only executive decisions and military responses, but also be able to choose who holds them responsible for their actions – or not.
