Federal judges voted Aug. 19 to go on strike across Mexico, in protest of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's pending reform of the country's judicial system. The judges will join thousands of other court employees who similarly announced an indefinite strike earlier that day over the proposed constitutional changes. Under the judicial reform [5] unveiled in February, the number of justices ("ministers") on the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) would be reduced from 11 to nine, and all SCJN ministers as well as all judges and magistrates nationwide would be elected by popular vote. Candidates would be appointed by the three "powers" of the state: executive, judicial, and legislative. The reform would also establish a Judicial Discipline Tribunal to investigate jurists for possible corruption. The monitoring group Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) criticized [6]the proposed reform as representing a "setback for human rights" that could consolidate power in the executive and "lead to the continuation and deepening of patterns of impunity and abuse against the population."
President López Obrador dismissed these concerns, stating: [8]"There will not be more control by the executive power, there will be control by the people."
The reform will need a majority of votes in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, and then approval by a majority of the 32 state legislatures, to take effect. If it passes, all serving jurists will have to step down in 2025, to be replaced by elected ones. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office Oct. 1, fully supports the reform. (NYT [9], Jurist [10], Latin America Advisor [11], PRI [12])
See our last reports on the judicial reform [13] and the human rights crisis [14] in Mexico.
