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In Final Act, Mexico’s Departing Leader Aims to Shake Up Judiciary
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is preparing constitutional changes that have spooked foreign investors
The overhauls proposed by Mexico’s departing leader sparked a strike by judicial workers.
By José de Córdoba
Sept. 1, 2024 9:00 am ET
MEXICO CITY—Over six years in power, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador reshaped Mexico’s political landscape with a pugilistic nationalism, but his policies often hit a roadblock in the country’s courts. With his final act in office, he is hitting back.
López Obrador is preparing to push through an unprecedented overhaul of the judicial system that has spooked foreign investors and raised tensions with the U.S. His party and allies won large majorities in June elections for Mexico’s Congress, which takes power Sunday, giving him a month to get constitutional changes approved before he leaves office Oct. 1.
The judicial bill is among a raft of constitutional changes López Obrador wants to pass in September as he seeks to burnish his legacy with what he deems corruption-busting moves to eliminate vested interests in tribunals and autonomous regulatory agencies in charge of promoting transparency and competition in business. Those agencies have also been an obstacle to his agenda since he won the presidency in 2018.
But nothing compares to the opposition and controversy that his judicial plans have engendered. Under the president’s proposal, all of Mexico’s more than 1,700 federal judges and magistrates, including Supreme Court justices, would face nationwide elections to be held in 2025 and 2027.
The looming passage of the overhaul has paralyzed the country’s court system as judges and thousands of court workers have gone on strike and are working only on urgent cases. Mexico’s peso has weakened against the dollar since the June election, losing 14% of its value and signaling the fear of foreign investors about the changes. And the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, who normally has warm relations with López Obrador, issued an unusual warning.
“I believe popular direct election of judges is a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy,” Salazar said in a statement. “Direct elections would also make it easier for cartels and other bad actors to take advantage of politically motivated and inexperienced judges.”
Salazar also wrote that the proposed makeover is a threat to commerce between the U.S. and Mexico, which are each other’s top trading partners. The measures risk disrupting labor tribunals and dispute-settlement mechanisms under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, industry groups say. A Mexican Supreme Court analysis found the changes could imperil negotiations to renew the free-trade agreement if foreign investors’ rights aren’t protected.
The ambassador’s statement drew rebukes from López Obrador and his successor and protégée, Claudia Sheinbaum, who won election in a landslide in June. Mexico sent the U.S. Embassy a diplomatic note calling Salazar’s statement an unacceptable interference in the country’s internal affairs.
López Obrador said Salazar’s statement would please Mexican oligarchs, whose interests the president has long said the courts serve. Sheinbaum said elections would increase judicial independence and prevent a return to Mexico of one-party rule, “when the Supreme Court was an appendage of the executive branch.”
“It seems that they have forgotten those times,” Sheinbaum said of critics.
The president-elect said that the changes won’t affect foreign investment and that she was willing to discuss how the measures could affect the USMCA, but it isn’t the business of other countries to discuss how Mexico chooses its judges.
But legal experts say the changes are a giant step backward toward the very authoritarian past that Sheinbaum refers to, when Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party ran the country with little opposition for most of the 20th century.
Few democratic countries elect federal or national judges, with Bolivia being the only exception in the Western Hemisphere, said Gabriel Negretto, a constitutional reform expert at Spain’s Carlos III University. Currently, Mexican candidates for judges undergo years of training and pass rigorous exams as they advance in their legal careers, a process that would end under López Obrador’s proposal. In the U.S., most states allow for the election of local judges, but federal judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve life terms.
Investors see independent judiciaries—sheltered from politics—as a sign of strong rule of law, said Malcolm Dorson, head of emerging markets strategy at Global X, a New York-based provider of exchange-traded funds with more than $50 billion in assets under management.
“This is a big swing from the momentum Mexico enjoyed the previous four years, when its market enjoyed an environment where politics seemingly didn’t matter, which markets love, to one where politics mean everything, which markets hate,” he said.
While López Obrador won’t be in office when the proposed changes would take effect, some Mexican political analysts see him as retaining a strong influence over the country and the ruling Movement of National Regeneration, also known as Morena, which he founded in 2011.
López Obrador has frequently said he would retire to his country home in southern Mexico and has no plans to exercise power behind the scenes.
Judges won’t be able to run as candidates for Morena, or any other political party. But the risks of political interference are high given the commanding position of the ruling party, legal experts say.
Friendlier courts could ease passage of López Obrador’s agenda after he leaves office. The Supreme Court had stopped López Obrador from enacting much of his nationalist agenda, such as recovering state control over the electricity industry.
Sheinbaum supports the judicial changes, but executing the overhaul might take up most of the energy of her new government, leaving her little bandwidth for her own agenda, which includes an expansion of social programs that need foreign investment.
“I think her hands are going to be somewhat tied. She’s going to be busy implementing the reform agenda and dealing with the political and economic fallout,” said John Creamer, a former senior U.S. diplomat who served in Mexico City.
Polls show there is widespread dissatisfaction with the corruption-riddled Mexican justice system. Justice is slow. Crimes often go unreported and unpunished. López Obrador says the measures will foster independence and citizen participation, bringing democracy and accountability to the judiciary.
“What we want is to take away from criminals a power that has to be at the service of the people, dispensing justice,” he said at a recent news conference.
Legal experts say that the most glaring problems with Mexico’s weak rule of law lie with prosecutors and police rather than judges, and that the proposed overhaul won’t address them.
The measures call for the replacement of all Supreme Court justices in a national election next year. The candidate with the most votes would be elected chief justice. High court candidates must have at least five years of experience in legal practice. They would be nominated by the three branches of government. The ranks of aspiring judges would be thinned down by drawing lots.
Candidates would be banned from receiving campaign contributions or advertising on radio and television. All debates and radio and television appearances would have to be coordinated by the country’s electoral agency.
But the overhaul raises the risk of political interference and involvement of drug gangs who have killed many candidates in Mexico’s local elections and could go after judges as well. Litigants would likely to see significant delays given the massive turnover of judges.
Write to José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com
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