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.

  • nevemsenki@lemmy.world
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    30 days ago

    Speedrunning populism, let’s see how that goes. Cartels electing judges is my bet.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      If that’s the case then the Cartels already elect/make most of the politicians — whom select the judges — so there’s not really much of a difference, is there?

      • Saleh@feddit.org
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        30 days ago

        Yes there is. You need the entire country for national elections and there is one government from one parliament. You might have the same on state level, where interference is easier. But you need thousands of judges in thousands of districts. That will become very easy to interfere with.

        But a corrupted muncipal parliament does not have the saem effect, like a corrupted judge, who can let his buddies off free, while imprisoning journalists and other critical dissidents against the cartels.

        • Asafum@feddit.nl
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          30 days ago

          like a corrupted judge, who can let his buddies off free

          US “judge” Cannon enters the chat.

          • FrowingFostek@lemmy.world
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            29 days ago

            I just like the idea of a corrupt judge, in the US, getting primaried by a working class person. Obviously, with the correct counsil, if elected.

            I want to believe those are the kinds of people this legislation is designed to support, in a perfect system.

            If not, its just more fluff to jam up and backlog the beurocracy.

            How it will play out is another story. Maybe Mexico will try it out.

            • Triasha@lemmy.world
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              28 days ago

              I can say that unqualified judges generally cause the corruption more than the qualified ones.

  • ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    30 days ago

    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?

    • x00za@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      30 days ago

      Electing judges is stupid. Judges should be neutral and uphold the current laws. It is up to the elected parties / president / groups to make sure all Judges are neutral. If you can vote on Judges that mean they have a political power that has nothing to do with their job.

      • Belgdore@lemm.ee
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        30 days ago

        US Supreme Court Justices are not elected. They make a lot of political decisions beyond just upholding the status quo. There are a lot of US states that have judicial elections and they don’t have major crises because of it.

        • slickgoat@lemmy.world
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          30 days ago

          Don’t kid yourself, the US Supreme Court is balls deep in politics. The situation where political parties can essentially buy a Supreme Court result for life is a disgraceful situation. That’s why the US is in such a terrible mess. Justice is not served, politics is.

          • Belgdore@lemm.ee
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            30 days ago

            My point is precisely that the US Supreme Court is embroiled in politics. The notion that being appointed somehow insulates the justices from politics is absurd.

            Elections at least create some semblance of accountability to the voters.

            • slickgoat@lemmy.world
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              30 days ago

              I’ve made this point elsewhere. In Australia the Chief justices are appointed by the government based on a shortlist presented by the legal establishment. They are preeminently qualified and are above politics. Both sides of the political spectrum are fine with this system and it is not gamed.

              It is utterly non-controversial and the Australian people respect the institution. Tell me again how it is absurd to remove politics from a judicial system?

      • Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        30 days ago

        Just look at the US Supreme Court’s recent rulings and tell me that’s a healthy judicial system. I’d rather have the ability to vote for a judge, but more importantly, we need to have a system in place that can more easily impeach them should their actions not reflect the will of the people.

        • njm1314@lemmy.world
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          29 days ago

          No matter what your system is it all comes down to the real key of democracy. That is society having a respect for democracy and the rule of law. If your Society doesn’t have an innate desire for a just system you’re not going to have a justice system no matter what system you use. It’s not a tangible thing it’s something that has to be created over time. Elected judges or appointed judges, there’s deep flaws to both concepts.

    • Lesrid@lemm.ee
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      30 days ago

      What many democracies around the world are missing is greater recallability in offices. Citizens need to be able to easily oust people nonviolently.

      • Belgdore@lemm.ee
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        30 days ago

        Short terms of office should have the same effect. If you want to stay in power you should have fight for it.

          • Belgdore@lemm.ee
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            30 days ago

            Elected Judges still get their jobs done. They have clerks who do a lot of their drafting and grunt work in the office.

            For large elections, there are staffers and volunteers who do a lot of the electioneering. For small elections, campaign events only occur on weekends and at other times when court is not in session.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      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.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        29 days ago

        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.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          29 days ago

          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.

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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              29 days ago

              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.

    • slickgoat@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      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.

      • LotrOrc@lemmy.world
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        30 days ago

        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

        • slickgoat@lemmy.world
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          30 days ago

          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.

    • young_broccoli@fedia.io
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      30 days ago

      The thing is that the candidates for judges will be chosen by commitees from “the 3 powers” which are, basically, under controll of MORENA.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
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      29 days ago

      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.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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      Probably. You’re now going to have judges raising money to campaign. And the average on-the-street voter knows fuck-all about what qualifies somebody to be a judge, so they’re unlikely to pick better candidates.

      • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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        30 days ago

        What qualifies someone to be a judge is simply redefined to be what is popular. A judge should therefore no longer follow the law, but make the ruling most in line with what is popular. Under a voting system that is the sole qualifier.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          30 days ago

          Yikes. That’s an insanely misguided worldview.

          Do you know what was real popular for centuries? Fucking slavery.

          Popularity, like legality, is independent of morality. We should be striving to better understand how to improve the well-being of everyone, and use that information to legislate what is moral based on that ultimate goal. Popularity should not figure into this at all.

          • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
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            29 days ago

            Slavery looks a lot more popular when you don’t let the slaves vote. If the slaves could vote – i.e. if there was a greater degree of democracy – there would surely be no slavery. It was the repression of the political power of a large segment of the population that enabled slavery.

            Surely, if we educate people on class consciousness, they will generally act in alignment with the common interest, right prole? Certainly it’s not a better solution to dictate morality to them unilaterally through some technocratic institution (that’s rather like what the aristocracy was), because we have no particular way of ensuring that they will act in the common interest – which is not especially their interest – unlike the common people, for whom the common interest is their interest.

        • Saleh@feddit.org
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          30 days ago

          Judges without elections have a pretty free hand to be racist or misogynist pieces of trash.

          So do judges that oppose these. Meanwhile in a racist or misogynist electorate judges will be compelled to cater to those “values”