Symposium on the Judicial Overhaul in Mexico: Introduction

—Ana Micaela Alterio, ITAM (Mexico City)

[Editors’ Note: This is the introduction to a symposium on the recent constitutional amendments affecting the judiciary in Mexico. The symposium pieces are cross-posted here (in English) and at IberICONnect (in Spanish). We are grateful to Ana Micaela Alterio for her work in organizing the symposium.]

In May 2018, at a campaign event in Atlacomulco (State of Mexico), then-future president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) asked his audience: “Do you know of anything the Supreme Court has done for the benefit of Mexico, have you heard of anything they’ve resolved in favor of the people? Nothing.” Not even ten months after assuming the presidency, AMLO had already sent multiple projects to the Legislative Branch to try to reform the Judicial Branch. Among them, the proposal for the popular election of Supreme Court Justices was one of the first.

This would mark what became 6 years of continuous tensions between the Executive and Judicial branches. These tensions were somewhat eased when former Justice, now a member of Morena, Arturo Zaldívar assumed the presidency of the Supreme Court and managed, in 2021, to implement a constitutional reform “with and for the judicial branch.” However, tensions flared up again with Norma Piña’s succession to the position in 2023.

The discord between the branches then became evident. On February 5th of this year, López Obrador sent an initiative to Congress to reform the judicial branch. During the electoral campaign of now-President Claudia Sheinbaum, accusations against the Court increased. The reform remained a latent threat until Claudia Sheinbaum not only won the elections but also secured supermajorities in Congress for her coalition. An added detail in the Mexican institutional design is that the new Congress began functioning on September 1, 2024, while the incoming president takes office on October 1. This month of difference was crucial for López Obrador to take advantage of the new majorities and accelerate the approval of his long-desired reform, officially published on September 15.

Barely fifteen days have passed, and we still haven’t recovered from this constitutional roller coaster, which isn’t over yet. More reforms are coming, and the irrevocability of the one at hand is being questioned. While experts agree that the reform is a huge misfortune and should be reversed, the possibility of resorting to the doctrine of unconstitutional constitutional amendments is not easy, as this type of review in Mexico has no clear precedents, and its operability would be practically impossible. What is clear is that a constitutional experiment is being set in motion, whose consequences for Mexican democracy are still uncertain but not at all encouraging.

This symposium compiles nine entries from experts analyzing the judicial reform, its content, context, and foreseeable consequences. The first, by Tania Groppi is entitled “Judicial Overhaul and Democratic Backsliding in Mexico“. Here you will find the institutional key that made the reform possible, a constitution with rigidity clauses, but operating as if it were flexible, and the data to conclude that this configured a “complete dismantling” of the judicial power. The second entry, by Roberto Niembro Ortega, is titled “The Transition Towards Another Type of Constitutionalism in Mexico“. There the author predicts that this constitutionalism will be “illiberal, nationalist, majoritarian, and hyper-presidentialist.” Francisca Pou Giménez, in the third entry titled “The judicial reform snowball and the state of Mexican democracy,” presents a complete panorama of what Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s six-year term was like in democratic terms and how it culminated in this September 2024, being, more than a transformation, “the last contorted grimace of the old, of a type of politics never entirely gone.” From there, Rodrigo Camarena‘s entry, “The Mexican Judicial Reform: So What?” unravels why, despite many people seeing the reform as just an elite problem that doesn’t affect their daily lives, it will greatly worsen the lives of those in more vulnerable situations. Sandra Serrano continues along this line. In the fifth post: “The Other Judicial Reforms in Mexico: Elected and Faceless Judges, Military Personnel with Investigative Tasks, and Mandatory Pre-Trial Detention,” the author finishes illustrating for us the meaning of a sum of reforms, especially in criminal matters, that change the constitutional logic. Thus, the authoritarian combo begins with judicial reform but finishes with human rights. In our sixth entry, Alfonso Herrera discusses “The future of the Mexican Supreme Court” by analyzing the text of the “popular” reform and addressing six immediate problems that it presents for its implementation. In our seventh issue, entitled “A self-generated problem: on the dilemma of the Supreme Court of Justice regarding the control of constitutional reforms”, Jaime Olaiz-González addresses the great disjunctive faced by the current Supreme Court of Justice: whether it can/should declare unconstitutional the Judicial Constitutional Reform. A topic to which is added the eighth entry by Imer B. Flores: “The problem of the Amending or Revising Power and its constitutional limits”, where the author makes a historical and jurisprudential account of the Judicial Review of the reforms. Finally, as a stellar closing, we have the epilogue “Abusive judicial reform in Mexico” contributed by David Landau, Rosalind Dixon, and Irene Parra Prieto, which serves as a synthesis to understand this constitutional reform as a clear example of abusive constitutionalism. 

At the end of this symposium, there is absolutely nothing that can be encouraging, but there are many keys to analyzing a regime change that can hardly be called democratic and respectful of human rights. A change like that is unfortunately not an exception in comparative terms. We have already observed similar declines in other countries. However, a thorough critical analysis of Mexico’s situation can provide valuable insights, potentially helping to halt the spread of such anti-democratic trends elsewhere.

Suggested citation: Ana Micaela Alterio, Symposium on the Judicial Overhaul in Mexico: Introduction, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Sept. 30, 2024, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/introduction-symposium-on-the-judicial-overhaul-in-mexico/