The 2024 Judicial Reform in Mexico

On September 11, 2024, the Senate of Mexico approved the controversial judicial reform, prompting Mexican lawyers and, particularly, members of the judiciary to react strongly, even violently breaking into the Senate in protest. The reform was signed into law on Sunday, just one day before Mexico’s independence day.

The reform is a parting gift and the brainchild of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The ruling party, MORENA (Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional), achieved adopting the judicial reform thanks to a qualified majority in Congress and Senate. In this blogpost, we show that the way in which the judiciary reform was passed in the Senate cannot be considered as “expressing the will of the people”. We suggest that the very way in which the Senate vote came to pass is undermining one main justification of the judiciary reform, namely that it will lead to a judiciary “of the people”.

How was the Judicial Reform passed?

As a constitutional amendment, the judicial reform required a qualified majority in both Chambers of Congress to pass, i.e., in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, according to Article 135 of the Mexican Constitution. In the Chamber of Deputies, MORENA worked through an alliance with the Green Party and the Workers Party. Mario Delgado, MORENA’s President, had orchestrated an extraordinarily effective nomination of candidates by both simple majority and proportional representation during the election campaign. As party president, he was in charge of approving candidates for MORENA all over the country and worked with the other parties in the alliance to secure a majority in the Chamber of Deputies.

The Mexican Chamber of Deputies is composed of 500 deputies, of which 300 are elected by simple majority and 200 through proportional representation. Candidates elected by simple majority run in their districts, and the candidate with the most votes wins. The remaining 200 seats are distributed amongst all parties in the Chamber of Deputies according to their election results based on a list that each political party presents, with 200 candidates in five geographic divisions, each geographic division with 40 candidates on their list, known as “circunscripciones”. The election result in each circunscripción determines the number of seats that are distributed via proportional representation.

As a result of Delgado’s efforts, Claudia Sheinbaum’s coalition “Let’s continue making history” (consisting of MORENA, the Green Party and the Workers Party)  won 275/300 electoral districts, which, when combined with the proportional representation deputies, gave them 364 seats or 72.8% of Congress in the federal elections of 2024 in Mexico. The Green Party, thanks to the alliance, managed to get 77/500 of the deputies with only 8.4% of the vote, and after the seats were distributed, 15 of those 77 deputies changed to MORENA so MORENA would have a simple majority, necessary to elect the presidency of the Congress. The coalition chose strategically which party would lead the coalition in each district to optimize the number of deputies they could have without violating electoral and constitutional law. This resulted in the Green Party winning 60 districts, a number that would have been impossible without the alliance.  The Workers Party also won many more deputies due to the alliance. Despite only having gathered 54.2% of the votes for the deputies, the coalition led by MORENA now has a qualified majority in the Chamber of Deputies. This did not violate electoral or constitutional law because the Constitution stipulates that overrepresentation is calculated by party and not by coalition. It was a true blow to the opposition. With this qualified majority in the Chamber of Deputies, the judicial reform passed easily.

However, in the Senate, MORENA did not obtain the qualified majority fairly. Here, the ruling coalition had 83 senators. 2/3 of the Senate are needed to approve the reform, which in the usual interpretation means that 86 senators are necessary (the Mexican Senate is composed of 128 senators, 2/3 would be 85.33 senators, but the political and legal practice has always been to round the number up to 86). Supporters of the judicial reform thus sought senators who would switch sides. Two senators from the now-defunct Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) were convinced.

The PRD is the party to which López Obrador had belonged for decades but which, after 2012, allied with the right-wing parties (PRI and PAN, now in the opposition). It lost its national registration in 2024 after obtaining less than 3% of the votes, the minimum necessary to maintain it. Yet, it is important to highlight that the two senators, Araceli Saucedo and José Sabino, were initially campaigned as senators representing PAN, PRI, and PRD. But, once they were elected, they decided to switch sides and began cooperating with the president’s coalition, even changing parties, and thus they voted in favor of the judicial reform.

The last senator vote was obtained through an odd legal maneuver involving Miguel Ángel Yunes (father and son). Miguel Ángel Yunes Marquez is a senator from PAN, the party of the opposition that obtained the most votes for a single party, with more than 9.5 million votes. He initially stated that he would vote in line with his opposition partners and thus against the reform.  Two days before the senatorial voting, he cut communications with the members of his parties and the public. This caused great uncertainty about what happened to him, and many began suspecting he would switch sides.

On the day of the vote, Yunes Marquez reported that he was feeling ill and Miguel Angel Yunes Linares, the senator’s father and substitute, would take his place in the meeting. Later that day, Yunes Linares appeared in the Senate, received with cheers by the ruling coalition and screams from the opposition senators who called him a traitor. Strangely enough, in the end, it was Yunes Marquez (the son) who voted when the moment came, recovering from one moment to the other.

Because of the steep change in both Yunes’ behavior, there is speculation about the reasons. Some believe that, because both Yunes have a history of criminal investigations (Yunes Marquez for corruption and Yunes Linares for pederasty and corruption), they were bribed into voting for the reform, under the threat of prosecution and the reward of not being investigated if voting in favor.

Why the Senate vote undermines one main justification of the judicial reform

As can be seen from the previous description, the way in which the judicial reform got passed in the Senate is the result of what elsewhere has been called “heinous measures”. In addition, there is a lack of direct cohesion between representatives and the people who elected them. Voting for a candidate is voting for the expectation that the individual will respect a particular ideology embodied in proposals and a party program. Despite this, the approval on September 11 showed that there are no mechanisms to stop a representative, once elected, from acting in their own interest without respecting the wishes of the voters who elected them. It is not clear how the judicial reform can be said to be the result of the “will of the people”.

Yet, this has been the longstanding justification given by outgoing President López Obrador. For example, López Obrador summoned a meeting with the population in El Zócalo, Mexico City’s main square, where he “validated” the judicial reform by conducting a voting by people raising their hands.

If Senate representation truly reflected the will of the people, the judicial reform would have received 83 votes in favor and 46 against because the ruling coalition only had that number of seats, even with the strategic use of electoral rules in the Chamber of Deputies described above. Therefore, it is an example of political and intellectual dishonesty to use the people as legitimization when, without the intervention of partisan strategies, the people did not choose the reform according to the Constitution nor with their votes. The people did not elect the necessary senators to implement the reform, and much less did they elect it directly.

The Senate vote did not reflect the number of voters necessary to exclusively change judicial bodies that serve as political checks in favor of corruptible election mechanisms. This is detrimental to the functioning of a country like Mexico and clearly manipulates democratic norms and the will of the voters.

If the Judicial Reform has little to do with the will of the people, what’s the motivation?

Why does López Obrador and his coalition want to reform, thereby neutralizing the Judiciary? Why did the people of Mexico vote for someone who wants judges to be popularly elected? And what are the implications of this?

López Obrador follows the line of Latin American leftism, integrated by the Sao Paulo forum. The São Paulo Forum (Foro de São Paulo) is a coalition of leftist political parties and movements across Latin America and the Caribbean, established in 1990 by the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) and Cuba’s Communist Party. It was originally created in response to the collapse of Soviet communism and the perceived decline of socialism, aiming to unify leftist forces to counter neoliberal policies and promote social justice, sovereignty, and integration in the region.

The Forum serves as a platform for dialogue and coordination among its members, advocating for progressive economic policies, human rights, and resistance to foreign intervention, particularly from the U.S.  Important members of the Forum include Brazilian President Lula Da Silva and the Movement for Socialism, led by Evo Morales. Former Bolivian President Evo Morales and López Obrador have been very close, as evidenced by the fact that López Obrador granted him political asylum after the 2019 Bolivian electoral crisis and flew him to Mexico on a government plane.  Bolivia has in the past adopted a similar (if not quite as far-reaching) reform that introduced popular vote of high court judges, the Constitutional Tribunal and members of the Magistrate Council, which appoints and dismisses judges. To some extent, the Mexican example thus follows a broader Latin American leftist movement focusing on popular votes.

We suggest, however, that the judicial reform is ultimately aimed at the political erosion of the Judiciary and not at the democratic legitimacy of the judiciary. In Mexico, the judicial power was originally appointed through what is called “judicial career.” The judicial career is an exam-based selection system that is based on equal opportunities and merits of the individuals who wish to participate in it as a criterion. Its purpose is to create a barrier between the public servants and the judicial function (this is according to the Ley de Carrera Judicial del Poder Judicial de la Federación).

The constant mentions of internal corruption within the Judiciary, both in the morning press conferences and by the spokespersons of various political actors aligned with the President’s project, have created the necessary tension to make the reform appear desirable to many.

In his discourse, López Obrador has severely attacked the excesses of the Judiciary. He uses this as an additional justification for the need of judicial reform. Yet, the only judicial organs he seeks to change are the ones that serve as a political counterweight to excessive administrative power.

The judicial positions that will be changed are those from the district judge upwards. Said district judges and the upper echelons in the judicial hierarchy have the faculty to judge upon constitutional controls against acts of authority. For example, the “amparo” is one of Mexico’s legal tools of constitutional control for the protection of fundamental and human rights from authority abuses. Only district judges, magistrates of higher tribunals and ministers of the Supreme Court can adjudicate the amparo.

Yet, the judicial reform does not contemplate lower ranks of judicial positions that do not have the faculty to adjudicate amparos and other procedures invalidating official acts. This is at odds with the proclaimed aim of making the judiciary more democratic: most of the people who have recourse to the judiciary will rather be confronted with lower-rank judges than district ones.

This indicates that the president and his political forces’ intention is likely not to improve the justice system or accessibility for the people of Mexico but rather a strategy to eliminate the few checks and balances remaining on his government.

With strong dominance over public administration and an overrepresentation in the legislative, the judiciary was one of the last checks on the governing party’s power. This constitutional lock could be undone only if the opposition achieves a qualified majority in both chambers of Congress.

It is startling when a ruler seeks to eliminate the checks and balances from other branches of government that limit their own sphere of power, because this will centralize the powers of the Union in the executive. As students of constitutional law in Mexico, we believe that greater attention to what is currently happening in Mexico is necessary.