Why Mexico is electing judges by popular vote
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Next year, Mexico will become the first country in the world to elect its entire judiciary, from the local level all the way up to the Supreme Court. The ruling Morena Party passed the landmark constitutional reform bill in September. Critics call it a power grab. Supreme Court justices resigned. Judicial workers went on strike. Protesters stormed the Congress building.

Mexico's top courts have long faced public criticism for corruption, nepotism and bowing to political and criminal pressure. But does this overhaul pose a threat to democracy and rule of law? Or is it democracy in action?

With me today is Will Grant, the BBC's correspondent in Mexico. Hi, Will. Hi, Lucy. Will, good to have you with us. We're going to be talking about the justice system on the podcast, but obviously the need for a justice system is because of crime. And I think the one thing we all understand about Mexico is that violence, the cartels and organised crime is a huge problem.

Yeah, it's really interesting. You've just obviously mentioned there about this sweeping reform that's on the books and is on the horizon soon in terms of coming into force. And in that, as you said, there were protests over the whole concept of reform. Overnight, the Mexican Senate approved a controversial plan to elect most of the country's judges...

It was approved in the midst of protests, strong debates and an unprecedented strike of thousands of workers and judges of the judicial power. Protesters storming the Mexican Senate, hoping to stop a controversial proposal that would dramatically change the country's judicial system.

But I think when I spoke to some of those people protesting, they weren't against the idea that some kind of reform of the judiciary was needed. Why? Because a lot of people would say it's sort of riddled with corruption. That the fact that the drug cartels in this country are so powerful, both in terms of their finances, their wealth, and of course of their firepower.

that they can buy judges easily, they can buy entire court systems, they can corrupt cases within the judiciary. Now, that's been a problem for decades. That's not new per se, but it does mean that

that there isn't that trustworthiness at all within Mexico's justice system. And the drug war isn't showing any signs of abating. In fact, as we speak, it's probably one of its worst expressions over the 21st century. The drug war in Sinaloa is raging out of control at the moment, where the Sinaloa cartel is at war with itself.

following the arrest of one of its co-founders, Ismael El Mayo Zambada. The co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel was essentially tricked into getting on a plane under the false pretense that he was going to see some property in northern Mexico and then flown into the United States to a small airport outside of El Paso and promptly arrested. He was arrested in the United States.

via a double cross by the sons of El Chapo Guzman. You know, it's all very dramatic. It sounds like something out of Narcos Mexico or something, but it is happening right now and it is affecting Mexicans' lives in those states as they're living under self-imposed curfews. So while all of that's happening, where does the judiciary sit in the middle of all that? How can it operate? How can judges go to work? It's a real question. So I think

We should remember that during this conversation because it is part of why some were pushing for reform. And as I say, even many of those who are against the reform at this level, a complete wholesale root and branch reform, would accept that change on some level was needed. And we're going to get to the politics in a bit more depth later. But when we're talking about Mexico's first female president, Claudia Scheinbaum...

She came into office with this massive majority, but she was the continuity candidate, right? Her party was already in power, so this reform was already taking place.

Yeah, absolutely. I spoke to her on the campaign trail and that was obviously the thing that she was underlining every time she was on the campaign stump to every voter she spoke to. It was just underlined over and over again that she was going to build what she calls the second floor of the fourth transformation. Now, that is basically an extension of

former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador's political project. He put down the foundations, as she put it to me, we're going to build on top of those foundations. Of course I'm of the same movement with López Obrador. We fought together for 20 years or more than 20 years to have the government that we have now and the opportunity for Mexican people and the right for Mexican people, the rights.

And of course, I'm going to live a different time in history. What that meant in practice for the voters was that they were, in the majority, very, very happy with his social programs in particular. They involved pensions for those who'd never received a pension before. A lot of grants for universities, for young people. Again, very, very popular.

So these stipends went down extremely well. And the fact that she was guaranteeing their continuity, I think, really helped contribute to her sweeping electoral win. And she did talk about these judicial reforms when she was campaigning. But if you could explain to us what they actually mean. Are we talking, Will, about 7,000 judges around that? Every single one of them being elected by the public from now on? Yeah.

basically we are. From the very top of the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, down to state courts, local court levels, they're all going to have to run for office. They're all going to have to run electoral campaigns. So of

course that is a very, very controversial step. Those who are against it say directly that politicizes the judiciary. It means that those who would be thinking about how they make their decisions in court might now be thinking, well, how will this go down with my electorate? And I think that is the kernel of the doubts of those who were protesting.

The other thing that I think really sticks in the craw of many is that there's going to be the creation of something called the Judicial Discipline Tribunal. That will be made up of five people. They will have the power to put in sanctions. They can request impeachment of judges. Those people, of course, will be elected to their positions and their decisions are absolutely final. They can't be appealed. They're voted, so...

Again, when Morena is such a powerful force in Mexico, it just adds to the sense that the entire system is going to be basically another political tool. You mentioned the Supreme Court there, Will. And I think for a lot of our listeners, when they think of a Supreme Court, they imagine the one in Washington, D.C., in the U.S.,

that hands down these incredibly significant life-changing decisions for people. Is the Supreme Court like that in Mexico? Do they deal with issues like abortion or LGBTQ plus rights? Absolutely they do. Yeah, they've had the right to overturn major legislative decisions over the years, which is one of its strengths, that they can create what are called amparos so that if

If, for example, the lobby for, say, the legalization of marijuana says that it's against its rights that people can buy alcohol, but that they are being criminalized for the use of marijuana, and that is accepted by the Supreme Court as it was, then it sets the tone, as it were. It's a test case for the rest of the nation. That ability to sort of push back on legislative decisions is, of course, an absolute challenge.

key feature of the Supreme Court, and one of the real concerns, I think, that that's going to be lost. This ability to set the law of the land, and the public won't be able to push back on what they consider to be unconstitutional legislation being put in place by Parliament. The idea that the Supreme Court has that weakened is extremely concerning, I think, for a lot of people who are following every twist and turn of this debate.

I mean, the magnitude of that feels huge. Well, if we look at an example, could, for instance, we see the abolition of something like the presidential term limit and a situation where then the Supreme Court would have no say?

I think exactly you're hitting on the kind of concerns that worry people. But of course, yes, that is where the Supreme Court holds its supremacy. It can unpick those things. It can stop them becoming law. If they lose the ability to affect that, what is called constitutional injunction...

then I think the real tenor of the justice system in Mexico is going to be changed completely. And as you mentioned, this does affect people's lives in Mexico. This isn't just some dusty conversation in smoke-filled rooms. This is about...

Abortion, a really good example, something that is now being decriminalised across Mexico as it's being criminalised in the United States. Now to Mexico and the Supreme Court there has decriminalised abortion nationwide. The decision comes two years after the court ruled that abortion was legal in one northern state. So, you know, that was something that we were beginning to see happen, particularly in the northern Mexican states, of young women coming,

South to receive abortions as they used to in the 60s and 70s, pre-Roe v. Wade. So, you know, extremely significant developments, all of these things. And there was this irony of this moment where the Supreme Court actually did have the opportunity to dismiss the reform under the current setup and declined to do so.

Extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary to see that this could have all been avoided, in essence, by the Supreme Court. You're right, it had it in front of it. But it basically declined on it over a technicality. It really was an extraordinary kind of moment. There's a lot of drama that doesn't make it onto the headlines, which is why it's so nice to be able to discuss it in detail like this. It's because, you know, these are things that...

quite honestly, a lot of the general public in Mexico wouldn't have picked up on. But they really are crucial. We've seen a huge strike. At its height, it was a vast majority of people in the judicial system. We've seen Supreme Court justices stepping down. We saw the President of the Supreme Court telling the BBC she felt it was completely politicising, while she accepted that reform was something that needed discussing, needed including, that this was

purely an attempt to undermine her institution. And what are you left with? Well, now this sort of strange limbo that we're in ahead of what I think the Morena party would call a blank slate, a fresh start for 2025. Well, can we look a bit more closely now at how this radical reform came to be proposed in the first place and the politics, I guess, behind it?

During his six years in office, former President López Obrador was particularly critical of the Supreme Court. What does he object to? I think he's always considered himself a disruptor. So he initially was part of the PRI party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Now that's the old dinosaur of Mexican politics.

And he was a member of that for quite some time until he moved to the left first with the PRD party and then now has created Morena, which we've been discussing. Morena is now the foremost force in Mexican politics. And Andrés Manuel López Obrador, you may or may not remember this, but narrowly lost the election to Felipe Calderón.

2006. Now, that sense of missing out there so narrowly, he blamed on, if you like, the entrenched elite powers in Mexico. He staged a protest that sat in the main thoroughfare, the Reforma, in the Zocalo, the main square in Mexico City, for weeks on end, bringing kind of a lot of traffic and commerce to a standstill. But ultimately, he had to accept the

defeat. He's never quite got over that. So when he came president, he kind of had quite a few axes to grind, you know, a decade or so later. One of those was against, I think, the judiciary. That is in part of what's going on in the AMLO history, if you like. It is not in Mexico's interest to maintain a judiciary subject to crime.

The judiciary is rotten, rotten and invaded by corruption.

The other thing is that they blocked some of his proposals. There was changes that he wanted to make to energy reform that had been put in place by his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto. There are things that he wanted to do in a variety of areas, security, for example, but just wasn't able to get past the Supreme Court. So, you know, he had that motivation in place, but he didn't have the numbers.

the two-thirds majority required in Congress for constitutional reforms. Well, the election on the 2nd of June put that to bed. And so he had this tiny window when Moreno won such a landslide across the nation that gave him this supermajority, as it's called, and he could push this reform through. And surely, Will, he's not been the only critic of the Supreme Court. I mean, if you speak to people in Mexico, do they also talk about

the Supreme Court and the concerns that they might have around it being corrupt or the inefficiency of the court.

even issues of nepotism? Yeah, I mean, the Supreme Court in the sense that it is the most visible aspect of the justice system as a whole. I think a lot of people in Mexico might struggle to talk specifics about what the Supreme Court has and hasn't done, but they will have an overarching sense that it is part of a corrupt system. And it's difficult for them not to feel that way. We see examples all the time in the papers of absolutes

absolute impunity, harking back again to the situation in the drug war, people stepping into public spaces and murdering people in broad daylight and then just walking away. Why aren't those people picked up? Why aren't they then put into the justice system? And if they are, and sometimes they are, how do they not end up serving long and very public prison sentences? Why are those politicians who are clearly in bed

with organised crime not being dragged into this? And when they are, why are they walking away? Now, I think previous efforts at reform haven't really worked. They haven't really been properly implemented, but it's in organised crime's interests to maintain a status quo where they are the dominant force, as well, of course, as the many big

billionaires and extreme power of corporate Mexico. That is also something that, again, doesn't get mentioned that much. But I think for your average Mexican family, they look at a society the uber wealthy in this country can simply do as they wish, and they blame the justice system for that.

So, Will, can we assume that because the Morena Party campaigned around this, it wasn't perhaps the biggest issue for them in campaigning, but it came up and they then won a landslide, that the general public are broadly behind these reforms?

They are in the sense that the general public is broadly behind Moreno. I get the feeling that if you were to start picking into some of this detail with family, you'd be sitting around with a family over tacos and going through some of the ideas. They might start going, I'm not so sure about this. I'm not so sure about that. Now, that's not to suggest people aren't informed in Mexico. People are actually. The electorate is pretty well informed. Nevertheless, I think there's some of the devil in the detail here has been lost, as it always is in an election campaign, isn't it?

I think there's a sense really that, well, this is what he wanted, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and he's always looked out for me and my family. That is something I heard a lot. Belief.

In the direction he was taking the country. And of course, it looks good in the sense that you're saying we're democratizing justice. We're putting it in front of you. You, the people, will choose the people who make decisions in Mexico. And that's got to be a good thing. So I think it had support in that direction.

area. Of course, where it didn't have support was in, for example, student protests among law students. I thought that was pretty interesting. By and large, the student body is pretty much with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, speaking about him as though he's still in the present tense. Of course, today it's Claudia Sheinbaum, but a big question in Mexican politics is the degree to which he is still on the political landscape from behind the scenes. But it was interesting to see law students en masse turn out rejecting this measure.

So we've examined the controversial reform that will entirely remake Mexico's justice system. Next, I want to look at how the changes will actually work.

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Yeah, it really does.

There are examples. One of the key ones that the López Obrador administration was using was the election of state-level judges in the United States. That, I think, bolstered their argument a lot, or certainly they felt it did, saying, "Look, we can't get criticism from up north. Washington can't say anything. They elect judges in that country." The other one that really stood out and was used a lot was Bolivia.

where judges are elected, particularly at the top level. But those examples aside, and I think one or two elsewhere in the world, there isn't anywhere as big and important as Mexico that has done this. And of course, it's having effects that go into the economy that obviously affect politics. So yeah, this was in that regard, I think, pretty unprecedented.

You say that Moreno sold this as being about democracy, putting the choice in front of ordinary voters. But the threat that these reforms represent to democracy is something that we've been hearing north of Mexico. What kind of response has there been, particularly from Canada and Washington, Will? Well, there was doubts not just sort of expressed behind the scenes or inferred in the media, just absolutely.

outwardly spoken by Ken Salazar, the US ambassador to Mexico. Based on my lifelong experience supporting the rule of law, I believe the popular direct election of judges is a major risk to the functioning of Mexico's democracy and the integration of the American, Mexican and Canadian economies under the USMCA Free Trade Agreement.

Which really did cause a diplomatic spatter in the country with López Obrador not taking it at all well. But it is clearly an expression

One echoed by the other partner in North America, Canada, of real doubt about this, of real concern, I think, about how it will affect the judiciary. And of course, then actually how that will affect relations, because let's not forget those three nations are tied together in a free trade agreement called the USMCA, which is up for renegotiation in 2026. There's a question whether or not it actually violates some of the rules of that free trade agreement.

agreement. So these things can affect the ability for Mexican companies to trade their products north. It may affect the ability for US companies to invest in Mexico. It sent such shockwaves through the international markets and so on that we saw

real investor doubt. And quite honestly, the real noticeable thing as somebody who lives in Mexico and was watching at the time was watching the peso slide as soon as this announcement was made. We've said, of course, that Claudia Sheinbaum was a continuity candidate. Markets normally love continuity. It's just more of the same. Great. Stability. This is what they want.

And then suddenly the peso started to slip and slip and slip. And it was because López Obrador had said that in the few weeks and months that he had remaining, he was going to push this reform through. I'm also trying to get my head around how this will work, given how monumental it is, 7,000 different judges and how you organize elections here.

For all of them. Do we have any indication, Will, of what the plan is there? It is a very good question. And I think that is, again, the sorts of details that we're still waiting. They're working on them. And I think by the spring of next year, we'll start seeing those campaigns picking up and some clarity taking hold.

Right now, my honest impression, and it is just an impression, I haven't spoken in detail to anybody in government about exactly how it's worked, because every time I have tried to bring it up, I'm met with a bit of a sense of like, well, we've got to see, but it's going to happen. You know, that's the sort of bottom line. The elections are penciled in, let's say for now, for June 2025, but the rest of that timescale just simply isn't

And I think the other thing that worries a lot of people is the practicalities. You're going to have a voter in some states with a ballot sheet in front of him or her with hundreds of names on it. And how on earth are they going to pick who's going to be a good judge and not be?

based on just a series of names? Are they really going to find time to go through all those names? Or are they just going to say, all of the judges that Morena say tick because I'm a supporter of Morena, so I'm going to put my cross next to Morena's choices, which obviously only further politicizes this whole conversation. So yeah, I think these practicalities that you bring up really are where the questions at this point lie.

So, Will, if we look at the big picture in years to come, there's all this concern about the power of the Supreme Court and that being diluted. But is the reality also that we're looking at a different kind of Mexico, a Mexico in which the government actually has far greater power than it's ever had before? Yeah, honestly, Lucy, I think that is the big concern for...

for those who raise doubts. Let's put them to one side just for a moment, and let's look at this through the López Obrador argument, that we're talking about a thoroughly corrupted judiciary that needed reform, and that what he's doing is putting that reform in front of the people. What could be the positive outcome is that people are involved in choosing the decision makers from top to bottom, from state level to Supreme Court, that there's

a healthy and genuine democratic movement in Mexico throughout the judiciary, the executive and the legislative branches of government. Now that is the rosiest outcome that I think that could take place and clearly that is the one that Claudia Sheinbaum is both pushing for and painting whenever she gets the chance to do so or whenever she's asked about it. Now the judiciary will have autonomy for a simple reason.

They were elected or chosen by the people. So it isn't true that there are threats, but there must be transparency in the actions of the judges. They are the first people who have to comply with the constitution. The other side that we've talked about and we've indicated is the one that you just mentioned there.

that this is a threat to Mexico's democracy, that this undermines it, this removes checks and balances, that this takes away the judiciary's independence, that this takes away accountability, that this stops the Supreme Court from reversing unconstitutional decisions that benefit the few. The opposite take of that rosy outlook

is really quite dystopian. It's really quite frightening, actually, I think, for those who are involved in the judiciary. And some of them have told me that it keeps them up at night to think about how this is going to work and are thinking about quite

quite honestly, leaving when it comes to some people involved in it. They don't want to have to run for office in those ways. That might be a small number of people. I think the majority will have to find ways to work within it. But put it this way, there's deep concerns throughout the justice system about how this is actually going to work in practice. And another point that's worth folding into that is the fact that we've talked about people standing for office as

as judges and as magistrates, but it sort of removes a lot of the requirements with which they're able to stand. They will need some broad legal experience, but it's nothing like it was. The examinations and so on that they currently have to go through are being removed. And there is a genuine concern, I think, among a lot of people that those who are unqualified will be able to stand and that people with far less experience will be able to put themselves on that ballot and

and potentially end up in quite powerful positions in the judiciary. Yeah, still a lot of uncertainty about how this is all going to pan out. Will, thank you. It's been lovely having you on the pod. It's always a pleasure. I love speaking to The Global Story. Thanks, Lucy. And thanks so much to you for listening. If you want to get in touch, email us at theglobalstory at bbc.com or send us a message or voice note on WhatsApp. You can find those details in our show notes.

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