To Western hearings, Mexico’s judicial elections might sound as an explicit undermining of democratic values. Specifically, the Rousseau-inspired principles of powers’ separation would, at least philosophically, not accept the popular election of judges and magistrates across Mexico. Keeping in mind the political domination that Morena, the Mexican ruling party, has acquired since the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) in 2018, reinvigorated by Claudia Sheinbaum’s victory in 2024, it is essential to comprehend the rationale behind this surely original setting of democratic governance.
The prevailing judicial system and the objectives of the reform
Like most Latin American countries, the Mexican judicial system is rooted in the tradition of Roman and Civil Law, a legacy of Spanish colonialism. In this sense, it could be argued that Mexico’s judicial structure, before the reform, perfectly resembled the prevailing liberal frameworks that we find in Western nations. When it comes to division of powers, Article 49 of the 1917 Mexican Constitution, born from the revolutionary period, clearly stresses that the legislative, executive, and judicial powers cannot be concentrated in one person’s hands. This legal detail is essential to assert that Mexico’s judicial reform is not an attempt to distort the constitutional order, which the country has long fought to acquire, and was established in the aftermath of the 1910–1917 Mexican Revolution, whose entire rationale was to depose the dictator Porfirio Díaz.
AMLO and Sheinbaum’s judicial reform represents a swift transformation of Mexico’s judicial structure. The structure of Mexico’s judiciary is to be found in Articles 94–107 of the Constitution, where we retrieve three levels of judicial bodies: the Supreme Court, Circuit Courts, and District Courts. Given the composition, it is worth outlining that these elections do modify the organization of Mexico’s judiciary. Previously, the Mexican President nominated Supreme Court judges, who the Senate then elected. At the federal level, local judges were selected through exams organized by the Federal Judiciary Council. Despite appearing as a competitive and independent mechanism, the Mexican judicial system did not shine for independence during the 79-year ruling term of the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI), nor was it able to escape the traps of nepotism and clientelism.
Reluctance and democratic issues
In the aftermath of the judicial election held on 1 June 2025, President Sheinbaum upheld the electoral experiment by claiming that the Mexican judiciary suffers from a class of endemic nepotism, which creates a dynastic legacy of appointed judges that likely covers half of the country’s judicial system. President Sheinbaum’s comments do have a historic and corroborated confirmation. In fact, some studies found that there is a correlation between the presence of relatives of judges within Mexico’s judicial system and low productivity in judicial bodies, including the Supreme Court. It is worth remembering that last year, AMLO was able to introduce the bill that would authorize the popular election of judges not only because of Morena’s political hegemony, but also because 66% of the Mexican society approved such a measure. Nevertheless, the popular election of judges from local tribunals to the Supreme Court raised questions about powers’ division and the capabilities of candidates, including candidacy requirements such as a bachelor’s degree in Law with a minimum grade point average of 8 out of 10 and, for the Supreme Court, a minimum 3 years of professional legal experience.
Is Mexico the only country that elects its judges?
The uniqueness of Mexico’s judicial elections produced a blend of exoticism and skepticism that can be countered just by looking north of Mexico itself. According to an estimate of the University of Chicago, in the United States, about 87% of 10,000 state-level judges will face the voters during their careers. Hence, the United States’ system also allows the popular election of local judges. A key distinction is that these US elections often involve a dependence on the Republican and Democratic parties and their primaries, making them less direct than the Mexican system. In a similar vein to Mexico’s approach, Bolivia also elects members of the judiciary by direct vote for the Plurinational Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Justice, the Agro-Environmental Court, and the Council of the Judiciary.
This wider context helps to demonstrate that Mexicans are not the only ones in their right to personally choose their judicial representatives. Still, checks and balances and the division of powers could have lost priority in favor of popular participation. By European and Western standards, such a statement can definitely sound like a reduction of proper democratic governance. And also inside Mexico, criticism of the judicial elections is widespread, with voters denouncing confusion at polling stations for the numerous amount of unknown candidates.
A political assessment
The Mexican judicial elections do not provide a universal metric for understanding the role of citizens in judicial matters globally. To properly understand voter turnout figures, it is essential to consider Mexico’s characteristics as a country that is ethnically diverse and territorially extended from its arid north to the Caribbean coast, with a plethora of political, social, and economic factors that make Mexico a heterogeneous country. Nationally, only 13% of Mexicans went to vote, with low participation rates in Chiapas, the poorest state of Mexico, and violence-torn Sinaloa. The election also expanded Morena’s political presence in the judiciary: of the 9 newly elected judges for the Supreme Court, 5 have direct or tangential ties to AMLO and Morena. Reasonably, considering that Morena already dominates the Mexican Congress and has control of many state-level governorates, the peril to the division of powers is real. However, framing this as a threat to democracy is a misreading of Latin American politics.
Despite controversies, the Mexican judicial elections allowed the election of Hugo Aguilar, an Indigenous jurist, as head of the Supreme Court, in a country that traditionally lacked diversity in its governing palaces. Regionalism also played a role in this popular election. The Puebla Group, a coalition of left-leaning Latin American presidents, praised the Mexican elections for bringing judges and magistrates under public accountability.
While the populist label could perfectly fit the motivations and execution of Mexico’s judicial elections, it also reiterates its traditional emphasis on national sovereignty, particularly relevant in a complex moment for Mexico’s international relations when facing threats from Trump’s White House.
Whether these elections will serve as a new model of governance for countries in Latin America and the Global South, or instead produce the first setback for the Sheinbaum administration, remains unclear. In any event, examining the Mexican elections requires a considerable degree of cultural relativism and awareness of Mexico’s political context. The Mexican people approved and sustained the creation of popular elections for the judiciary, yet widespread discontent and disappointment with the elections’ organization, evidenced by low turnout, suggests that enthusiasm for the principle did not translate into confidence in its execution.
Time will tell the legacy of Mexico’s direct judicial elections, and the work of the newly elected judges, now under the radar of Mexican voters and media, is the real indicator of the effectiveness of this electoral change. For now, the world observed Mexico’s attempt to innovate the concept of separation of powers and expand popular participation in the game of democracy, challenging Eurocentric and liberal notions of checks and balances. Whether the consequences of the reform will be positive or negative will largely depend on tangible judicial results and the courts’ relations with the government of President Sheinbaum.
Autor
Political scientist with a Master's Degree in Diplomacy and International Relations from the Diplomatic School of Spain. He is a Master's student in Latin American Studies at Georgetown University, where he is a Teaching and Research Assistant.
