Eight of the country’s 11 supreme court judges will stand down over reforms supported by President Claudia Sheinbaum
Eight of Mexico’s 11 supreme court judges have submitted their resignations after controversial judicial reforms, the top court has said.
In a move that has sparked diplomatic tensions and opposition street protests, Mexico is set to become the world’s only country to allow voters to choose all judges, at every level, starting next year.
The eight justices – including president Norma Pina – declined to stand for election in June 2025, a statement said, adding that one of the resignations would take effect in November and the rest next August.
The announcement came as the supreme court prepares to consider a proposal to invalidate the election of judges and magistrates. President Claudia Sheinbaum, however, has said that the court lacks the authority to reverse a constitutional reform approved by congress.
What would be a real world problem on voting for those judges?
It biases them towards catering to public demand instead of being a neutral arbiter of justice.
Want to keep your job as judge? Better not be ‘weak on crime’ etc…
But they’re biased anyway, towards whoever has the power to take away their job. They’re never neutral arbiters of justice.
In a well run country that requires a supermajority of some kind of council picked by different groups like some representatives for the judges, others picked by the legislature, etc. which avoids any group having full control of the courts.
Especially in rural areas where they can just legislate criminal justice policy from the bench.
That’s what the founding fathers thought but they end up being biased to whomever gets them the seat. Additionally, if the country decides to become more progressive or conservative, judges either have to be flexible based on public opinion, or they need term limits to make room for change. It’s broken.
Electing judges will get them involved with party politics. They’ll have to spend time campaigning, and there will be less experienced judges.
The US has that, doesn’t it?
Supreme Court justices are appointed and they serve for life (or retirement/resignation). State justices can vary.
No. The ruling party gets to appoint a new judge when one retires.
Afaik the problem is that the Democrats play nice and the Republicans take advantage of this, because why wouldn’t they? Ofc each party is going to appoint a judge with alligned world views, but sitting judges don’t need to show loyalty or do party politics whatsoever.
Good point. Thank you
Interesting question, and as lots have already commented, judges are possibly biased to whoever keeps them in power.
Perhaps a lottery amongst the pool of potential judges (lawyers or whoever it may be)
Sortition democracy is one of the cooler ideas anarchists have come up with as a way to replace representative democracy.
Anarchists didn’t come up with that. It shit existed for nearly 20 centuries and might still exist in some places today.
Well yeah, juries are selected that way in the US.
Some anarchists take it farther and see it as a way to completely replace representative democracy as a structure of power. No more politicians, no more elections, every position is filled randomly from the population.
Elected judges cannot ever truly be impartial judges. The Rule of Law in a democracy means that politicians are subject to the Law as much as anyone else. But electing judges turns them into politicians with the power to give themselves more power without checks and balances.
Basically it removes the independence of the judiciary, and in the process erodes democracy. Ironically.
I think the US has shown that unelected judges aren’t inherently impartial.
The US is broken for many reasons.
The Canadian Supreme Court, by comparison (in fact all judges in Canada) are merit based appointments. So far we’ve managed to avoid political appointments, for the most part. Although current conservative rhetoric is starting to target the courts.
Most functioning western world countries do not have partisanship in their courts.
Like most of what the US does, it’s been perverted by money. Most other functioning democracies run a judicial system that’s independent of the administration and at least reasonably impartial.
Yes, unelected judges are not inherently impartial.
However, elected judges are unanimously awful.
There is a distinction there. The former is capable of impartiality.
That is a good point.
My opinion is, not based on Mexico, that the public is uninformed in the majority of decisions. Basically delegating power to the common person, especially technical decisions to the public will mean the most popular choice will win mostly, not the best choice. That is basically populism in a nutshell. Imagine you had to choose in this example a food policymaker, the one is the charismatic Willy Wonka that will say he wants everyone to eat sweets all the time, he wants you to eat whatever you want to eat, give you choices by subsidising all the sweets, worse he will attack Dr. Grouch, because he wants to tell you what to eat, force additional taxes on sweets to try and guide people to eat more gross vegetables, in fact basically force you, the poorest to have no choice but to eat these “healthy” foods. And unfortunately Dr. Grouch will agree, he wants you to eat "healthy food because in a couple of years you and your children will reap the benefits.
Ok, then why don’t we apply this logic to democratically electing politicians?
This example was exactly the issue Socrates had with democracy actually, saying that a demagogue would be elected as a president or leaders of government the majority of the time. His solution was just as vague, so let’s just say there is no perfect system yet. All have their benefits and drawbacks.
Look it is messy, my feeling is you vote or don’t vote for a party based on their policy and track record, but after elections they have the will of the people to act, so they should then focus on the technical issues of government by being guided by their election promises, policy and the country’s constitution to ensure that minorities aren’t discriminated against for example.
By this logic, we shouldn’t democratically choose any government positions.
This example was exactly the issue Socrates had with democracy actually, saying that a demagogue would be elected as a president or leaders of government the majority of the time. His solution was just as vague, so let’s just say there is no perfect system yet. All have their benefits and drawbacks.
Look it is messy, my feeling is you vote or don’t vote for a party based on their policy and track record, but after elections they have the will of the people to act, so they should then focus on the technical issues of government by being guided by their election promises, policy and the country’s constitution to ensure that minorities aren’t discriminated against for example.
Democracy is undoubtedly better than what came before, just sayin.
Agree, but there are many flavours of it. For example we began the discussion on how Mexico extended their democracy to now include the judicial branch of government, others can be how they vote, for example electoral college in USA, ranked choice voting in some European countries like France or my country, South Africa, we have proportional representation and cannot even vote for our president
Despite the obvious common root in “populism” and “popular”, I don’t think that’s a fair “nutshell” description of populism at all.
The central core of populism is opposition to an elite ruling class. Right wing populism tends to attack education and expertise which does fit loosely with your description, but left wing populism is more focused on wealthy elites. Wealth has always been a terrible proxy for merit or the ability to rule.
To be against populism you either have to disagree that we are largely ruled by a class of elites, or think that being ruled by elites is not a bad thing. Anyone that thinks elites are not in control of the economy and political system in the US is borderline delusional. Anyone who thinks the elites got there by merit need to learn a lot more about figures like Elon Musk, Trump, or the Clintons.
Well I was not even focused on the USA in my reasoning of why in Mexico it is a bad thing to extend the democratic process to the election judicial branch of government or generally every decision to the public.
The USA has issues in their democratic elections, gerrymandering in certain states being one, the electoral college giving most or all the electoral votes to the winner and not a portion in relation to votes, propaganda being openly discussed on “entertainment” news channels. Then there is even lobbying that is allowed, politicians being able to buy and sell stock based on insider information, paid speaking events.
And the ruling by elites will in any system be an issue, even oppression by the majority can be an issue, that is usually why you have a good constitution, that lays the foundation of how government should work, the different spheres and how it should protect the most vulnerable in society. It has mechanisms to protect against an interest group gaining power to basically twist the system to their will and finally the last resort is the democratic vote of the people to ensure accountability.
After these mechanisms have failed there is no pretty answer on how to easily get back to a fair system. In my country South Africa, where we had a system that disenfranchised the majority of the population, I am glad that we had a bloodless coup d’etat and now we have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, but even that wasn’t enough again from a connected small majority from almost ruling the country. Luckily in our last election, in the first time in 30 years the ruling party lost their majority and now we have a 10+ party coalition ruling majority government, and in my opinion things are going good, but we know how fragile our democracy is and try to be as engaged as citizens can be.
Thank you for a solid answer.
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1,700?
Wow!
Democracy bad.
More like democracy good, but justice is not a popularity contest.
Justice is a democratic process, what the hell are you talking about? Justice has only ever come after democratic forces pushed it to the forefront and struggled against established power to make it happen.
You must be from the USA to misunderstand the separation of powers so badly.
The US fucking loves that shit.
It’s why I can see it’s bullshit.
The rich can’t control you as easily
The concern is actually the opposite.
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony
Democracy is the only viable system of government. That said, turning judges into politicians is probably not what we want, and there’s a lot of uncertainty in the philosophical literature about how best to deal with the judicial branch in general.
Who said the position must be political? Under the current usa system, the supreme court is nominated by politicians and decided by politicians. I wouldn’t call it functional currently.
Instead, examine a state like Washington that votes for many judge positions, with fixed terms and no political affiliation. Seems to be working better than the federal system of appointments.
So yes, democracy is best.
I would prefer that, yes. I suppose the worry is that at a federal level the positions could become politicized (a Supreme Court seat wields a tremendous amount of power — more than any senator). We can imagine a campaign to elect conservative judges.