Mexico supreme court judges resign over reforms to allow voters to elect judiciary

It biases them towards catering to public demand instead of being a neutral arbiter of justice.

Want to keep your job as judge? Better not be 'weak on crime' etc...

Electing judges will get them involved with party politics. They'll have to spend time campaigning, and there will be less experienced judges.

Interesting question, and as lots have already commented, judges are possibly biased to whoever keeps them in power.

Perhaps a lottery amongst the pool of potential judges (lawyers or whoever it may be)

Elected judges cannot ever truly be impartial judges. The Rule of Law in a democracy means that politicians are subject to the Law as much as anyone else. But electing judges turns them into politicians with the power to give themselves more power without checks and balances.

Basically it removes the independence of the judiciary, and in the process erodes democracy. Ironically.

My opinion is, not based on Mexico, that the public is uninformed in the majority of decisions. Basically delegating power to the common person, especially technical decisions to the public will mean the most popular choice will win mostly, not the best choice. That is basically populism in a nutshell. Imagine you had to choose in this example a food policymaker, the one is the charismatic Willy Wonka that will say he wants everyone to eat sweets all the time, he wants you to eat whatever you want to eat, give you choices by subsidising all the sweets, worse he will attack Dr. Grouch, because he wants to tell you what to eat, force additional taxes on sweets to try and guide people to eat more gross vegetables, in fact basically force you, the poorest to have no choice but to eat these "healthy" foods. And unfortunately Dr. Grouch will agree, he wants you to eat "healthy food because in a couple of years you and your children will reap the benefits.

Technically it could be better, since the people would get who they wanted, not who the ruling class wanted.

Unfortunately, while the ruling class is self-interested and manipulative, the general population is pretty fucking stupid.

Both groups will make terrible decisions.

Democracy bad.

The rich can't control you as easily

It's really hard to see your point when the American judicial branch is so obviously beholden to party politics and special interests. Judges can be voted on a lifetime appointment by a simple majority of 51 senators, who are likely to represent less than half the voting population of the country. I really think it's time for clunkier and more archaic forms of democracy to make way for a more direct and agile way to run the government. At the rate we're going, generations-long problems like climate change will be addressed when it's too late.

It's a terrible way, except all the others that have been tried.

each system has its pros and cons. They should be tailored to the specific needs of that specific system. So say, if you've got a problem with unelected officials getting corrupt and throwing wrenches in the rest of the system, then it might be beneficial to rework the laws to more easily remove said officials.

The US already has elected judges, they're so incredibly bad we barely even bother to write about it anymore. I know people talk about who are they beholden to? But that's the irrelevant question actually. The real problem is a judge that's elected has to campaign. And there's no greater source of corruption in all of politics than campaigning. No amount of patronage will ever equal the amount of corruption that comes from going around and begging rich people for money so you can be elected.