Mexico will amend its constitution this weekend to require all judges to be elected
Mexico will amend its constitution this weekend to require all judges to be elected
Mexico is poised to amend its constitution this weekend to require all judges to be elected as part of a judicial overhaul championed by the outgoing president but slammed by critics as a blow to the country’s rule of law.
Mexico is poised to amend its constitution this weekend to require all judges to be elected as part of a judicial overhaul championed by the outgoing president but slammed by critics as a blow to the country’s rule of law.
The amendment passed Mexico’s Congress on Wednesday, and by Thursday it already had been ratified by the required majority of the country’s 32 state legislatures. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he would sign and publish the constitutional change on Sunday.
Legal experts and international observers have said the move could endanger Mexico’s democracy by stacking courts with judges loyal to the ruling Morena party, which has a strong grip on both Congress and the presidency after big electoral wins in June.
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There seems to be something contradictory about the idea that letting people elect judges endangers democracy. If you don't trust the people to elect judges, how can you trust them to elect the people who appoint judges?
What many democracies around the world are missing is greater recallability in offices. Citizens need to be able to easily oust people nonviolently.
Short terms of office should have the same effect. If you want to stay in power you should have fight for it.
Terrible idea
Judges are not supposed to work for the majority. They are supposed to work for justice.
Justice in most cases means opposing political power (formal in this case).
Thus they should be selected in some way radically different from how political power is formed.
Sortition is one way, if you don't want some entrenched faction reproducing itself. Would be better than US too. But still sortition from the pool of qualified people, that is, judges, and not just every random bloke who applies, of course.
Justice in most cases means opposing political power
When has the court ever ruled in opposition to political power?
Sortition is one way, if you don’t want some entrenched faction reproducing itself.
It isn't as though you can't corrupt a candidate after they take office. Look at Clarence Thomas.
Russian Supreme Court in 1993 when ruling that Yeltsin and the parliament should both resign and have new presidential and parliament elections. Yeltsin's opposition agreed, Yeltsin said he's the president and it's democratic and legal that he decides everything and sent tanks.
Since the US was friendly with Yeltsin, this was considered business as usual.
In fairness, that was just a coup and regime change effectively at gunpoint.
Ye-es, but nobody in the West said so. Maybe if in that one moment things went differently, Russia would be at least a very flawed democracy today.
I disagree. All that does is turn judges into politicians. The US Supreme court isn't elected, but selected by politicians. Keep politics as far as you possibly can from people with an interest in gaming the system.
And look what has happened to the US supreme court in the last few years... That seems to completely disagree with your point. It has been stacked with very partisan judges by politicians looking to game the system
The key word is "stacked". Who stacked them? Political parties did.
My point is intact. Have professional judicial bodies create curated shortlist of suitability qualified candidates.
I think the difficulties that people have in appreciating this system is that they have been captured by the experience of their own failed system. To say that it wouldn't work means that you have to fundamentally ignore all the places where is is used successfully.
The thing is that the candidates for judges will be chosen by commitees from "the 3 powers" which are, basically, under controll of MORENA.
You could say the same of any public service role.
The voting public doesn't have the requisite experience and knowledge to make good decisions about candidates for executive or judicial roles.
Government is a different case. You're selecting a representative. Someone to represent you in parliament. The skills required to do so are in theory less significant. It's just a responsible person who will raise their hand at the right time.