Mexico’s states swiftly moved to remake the country’s entire judicial system on Thursday, approving an amendment to the Constitution that would be the most far-reaching judicial overhaul ever attempted by a large democracy.
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The measure, which would replace the current, appointment-based system with one in which voters elect judges, would put Mexico onto an untested course whose consequences for the courts and the country are nearly impossible to predict.
Proponents of the plan argue it would reduce corruption and give voters a greater role in a justice system widely regarded as broken. Critics of the overhaul accuse the Mexican government, which proposed and pushed for the changes, of endangering the rule of law by politicizing the courts, giving Mexico’s ruling party greater control over judges and eroding the country’s checks and balances.
The overhaul could see thousands of judges removed from their jobs, from those in local courtrooms to the chief justice of the Supreme Court. And it would drastically restructure a major branch of government responsible for meting out justice across the third-most populous country in the Americas.
The logistics alone are daunting: The country would need to implement new elections for thousands of judges, starting next year.
Mexico’s Senate passed the amendment on Wednesday. And by Thursday morning, a majority of state legislatures had approved the amendment, ensuring that it would reach the desk of the outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He has long championed the measure, which has for weeks brought thousands of people into the streets, both in opposition and support, and drawn warnings from the U.S. and Canadian ambassadors and legal experts.
Once the amendment was approved by a majority of the 32 state legislatures on Thursday (20 have so far approved), Mr. López Obrador said he would publish it on Sunday, the eve of Mexico’s Independence Day. By publishing it in the government’s official gazette, the president makes the amendment law.
“It is a very important reform,” Mr. López Obrador said at a news conference on Thursday. “It’s reaffirming that in Mexico there is an authentic democracy where the people elect their representatives. The people elect public servants from the three branches of government. That’s democracy — not the elites, the so-called political class, not the oligarchy. Everyone. Every citizen.”
The amendment, which would not immediately take effect, would reshuffle the courts at every level.
In June 2025, voters would elect all the members of the Supreme Court, the members of an oversight tribunal and about half of Mexico’s total of 7,000 judges. The remainder would be chosen in an election in 2027.
For weeks, a range of groups including more than 50,000 judges and court workers have staged protests and strikes in opposition to the plan.
This week, some protesters stormed into the Senate, calling on lawmakers to block the overhaul and forcing them to temporarily suspend debate on the amendment. The police eventually dispersed the demonstrations with fire extinguishers, and the Senate resumed in a vitriolic session, with lawmakers calling each other “liars” and “traitors.”
The amendment had passed easily through the lower house of Congress, in which the president’s party, Morena, holds a supermajority.
In the months ahead, after Mr. López Obrador makes the measure law, the Senate will issue a call for candidates and Mexico’s electoral agency will begin to organize judicial elections.
Other countries have voters elect judges to some degree, including Switzerland and the United States, but Mexico’s plan is so sweeping in its scope that it has drawn warnings.
“Democracies can’t function without a strong, independent and noncorrupt judicial branch,” the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, told reporters last month. “Any judicial reform needs to have safeguards that the judicial branch is strengthened, and not the subject to political conditions.”
Mr. Salazar added that the overhaul could pose a “risk” to Mexico’s democracy, and could “help cartels and other bad actors take advantage of inexperienced judges with political motivations.”
Mr. López Obrador said relations with the U.S. Embassy were put “on pause” after the ambassador’s remarks.
Many Mexicans have expressed support for the measure, saying it would give them leverage in a court system that few trust.
According to government surveys, 66 percent of Mexicans perceive judges to be corrupt, and analysts say nepotism remains rife. A recent diagnosis found that about 37 percent of judicial officials have at least one family member working in the judiciary.
The plan would also sever the judiciary and its oversight body, the Federal Judicial Council.
As of now, the head of that council — which, among other duties, appoints federal judges and also disciplines them — is the chief justice of the Supreme Court. A recent investigation found that, over two decades, the council imposed sanctions on about 400 of the 1,500 federal judges and magistrates it oversees, who had been accused of everything from sexual harassment to hiring family members. Only 30 people were fired.
“You can’t be judge and jury,” said Layla Manilla, a politics student who supports the overhaul. “This would imply better surveillance regarding cases of corruption, nepotism and negligence.”
But the overhaul would not affect other parts of the legal system that are also widely regarded as flawed and corrupt, such as state prosecutors’ offices and the local police. Less than 4 percent of criminal investigations are ever solved in Mexico, studies show.
Critics of the plan say it would eliminate long lists of requirements to become a judge, especially at the federal level, opening the way for people who have a law degree and a few years of legal experience to run.
“It undoubtedly affects judicial independence and is seriously against the legal profession,” said Víctor Oléa, the president of Mexico’s national bar association, who called the amendment “an erosion of the separation of powers.”
Simply holding the new slate of elections could be an expensive and significant challenge, experts say.
“Judicial geography is not the same as electoral geography; ballots never have so many names,” said Carla Humphrey, a member of the National Electoral Institute’s governing council.
Some from both sides say the debate has at least raised the justice system — often regarded as a distant force — as a topic of discussion for many Mexicans.
“Justice is being talked about in this country,” said Juan Jesús Garza Onofre, a constitutional law researcher. “That’s a very important and good thing.”
And these conversations, in the view of some experts, give the country the chance to at least ask the right questions.
“How do we get better referees of democracy? How do we get them to be more independent? How do we make them more solid? How do we get them to resolve conflicts sooner?” said Javier Martín Reyes, a law professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
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