Judicial reform will take place in two stages: half of the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, will be chosen in special elections in June 2025, and the other half in midterm elections in 2027. The justices current officers will have the opportunity to participate in elections or withdraw from office.

The Mexican public has repeatedly demonstrated its deep weariness of judges living high on the pork while leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces of a dysfunctional, deeply unfair and highly partisan justice system. At the same time as they fill the bureaucracy with family members (according to a report by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court herself, Norma Piña, the rate of nepotism in the judicial bureaucracy in 2022 it was a staggering one in two), judges regularly protect high-level elites while leaving some 87,000 prisoners languishing for years without trial or conviction.

It is worth recalling that Morena ran in favor of judicial reform during this year’s presidential campaign, asking the public for the two-thirds qualified majority needed to pass it and other reforms despite the objections of the ‘opposition. Voters required. And in a series of polls carried out shortly before ratification, support for the direct election of judges ranged from 68 to 75 percent.

Not surprisingly, this enthusiasm is not shared by the judiciary itself. His guerrilla war against reform began during the legislative process, when judges tried to stop the debate in Congress by means of an injunction or, failing that, prevent it from being sent to the state legislatures for consideration. Although the idea that the judiciary can intervene to prevent a legislature from doing its job is ridiculous on its face – the equivalent of Congress dictating to the courts what cases they can and cannot hear – it is further aggravated by the fact that Article 61 of the Mexican law governing the use of said injunctions (the Ley de Amparo), adopted by the now aggrieved opposition when it was in power in 2013, clearly shows that they cannot be used against constitutional amendments.

That didn’t stop the judiciary from trying again, however. Once the amendment was officially concluded, a judge and conservative activist from Veracruz with a series of disciplinary problems ordered that it be stripped of books within twenty-four hours; otherwise, she would refer the case to prosecutors who, she warned, could send the president to prison for up to nine years for contempt. Coolly, Sheinbaum emphasized during his morning press conference on October 24 that it was it is illegal for the judge to take something away this had already been added to the official federal register and that, by ordering so, it was the judge who had effectively placed herself in contempt.

Then it was the turn of the Supreme Court to intervene. Throughout October, he decided to accept a series of petitions presented by opposition legislators and political parties to stop the reform. This was mistake number one, because political parties in Mexico do not have standing to seek injunctions on constitutional issues; As for the judges themselves, the conflict of interest in claiming to rule on a measure that directly affected them was obvious to everyone involved. Undeterred by such niceties, the Court’s conservative majority persevered, and on October 28, Justice Juan Luis Alcántara Carrancá, who held a now an infamous dinner between Chief Justice Piña and opposition political leaders before the elections — presented a draft of his decision. In a language strangely reminiscent of Bush versus Gore decision of 2000, which infamously limited himself “Given current circumstances,” Alcantára’s text went to great lengths to present itself as “exceptional” (nine times) and “an exception” (five times). While accepting the established precedent that a constitutional amendment cannot be unconstitutional, he goes on to assert that the offending portions of the Constitution are not at all a constitutional text but relegable to a simple “federal electoral law” and therefore liable to be annulled. In a later interview on Radio Fórmula, former Supreme Court judge José Ramón Cossío (whose NGO Instituto Para el Fortalecimiento del Estado de Derecho is supported by USAID, the soft interventionist arm of the United States), breathlessly threatened that anyone who disobeyed the ruling, whether the president or the last lawmaker, could be punished. declared “in rebellion”, dismissed from office and tried.

This all sounds much more sinister than it actually is. With a huge popular mandate, Claudia Sheinbaum is not going anywhere, nor are MORENA legislators or anyone else — except for judges who, of their own accord, decide not to participate in the elections next year. Indeed, the Federal Electoral Court has already given the green light for the said election, and planning is already underway. Eight of the Supreme Court justices – the same eight who are trying to “exceptionally” place themselves above the Constitution – have already tendered their resignation from next year in order to benefit from the generous retirement compensation brought by the reform.

There is in fact more than a breath of despair around this vulgar little coup d’état, what in Spanish we call ahogado patadasthe beat of a drowning person. This is very probably the reason why, faced with calls from the Morena base to dismiss the offending judges (which his qualified majority allows), President Sheinbaum preferred to adopt a wait-and-see attitude, presenting a coherent case against the plotter during of his morning press conferences, but keeping his powder dry lest it be needed in advance.

But this episode raises a larger – and largely unresolved – question plaguing left-wing governments across Latin America: how to thwart well-funded legal campaigns that dress themselves in legalese to subvert popular democracy, and how to manage a judicial system that violates popular democracy. the law in the name of its defense, thus transforming itself into a renegade political actor.

The strategy of what Andrés Manuel López Obrador has called the “Supreme Conservative Power” is clearly to put Sheinbaum’s administration in a difficult situation: either bend and accept his capricious decision, or be seen as disobedient to the highest court. of the country, thus strengthening the authoritarian system. image of Morena’s popular government carefully cultivated by the national and international press over the last six years.

With a vote on Alcántara’s proposal expected as early as this week, it will soon become clear to what extent the justices, on their way out, are prepared to burn the house down. Sheinbaum’s response will set the tone not only for his administration but also for the generation to come.