Mexico's first-ever elected Supreme Court will be seated on Monday, and observers are watching closely to see whether it will assert its independence from the governing party that championed the country's first judicial elections.
Only three of the nine justices have any prior experience on the high court; the rest are new to the bench, including the court's president, Hugo Aguilar, a lawyer who has dedicated his career to defending Indigenous rights.
The idea of judicial elections was proposed by Mexico's former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who often clashed with judges who challenged his agenda. He argued that electing judges would make them more accountable and less corrupt. However, critics warned that such a process risked politicising the judiciary.
The election was intended to be non-partisan, but there were instances of voting pamphlets being distributed that identified candidates with links to the governing party. Many voters were overwhelmed by the sheer number of candidates, with 7,700 individuals vying for more than 2,600 judicial positions.
The Supreme Court, in particular, will receive special attention. It had previously served as a counterweight to the popular López Obrador, whose Morena party now also holds majorities in both chambers of Congress. "If the court wants to ensure its independence, it cannot rule in a partisan manner simply to support the government's position," said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director for Human Rights Watch. "It must base its positions on law."
It has been learnt that the new court has nearly 1,400 cases, which are pending. Here are some of the most prominent ones:
Mandatory pre-trial detention has brought Mexico widespread international criticism. López Obrador expanded the list of crimes for which someone is automatically jailed before trial, including for some non-violent offences. The policy appears to violate international treaties that Mexico has signed.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Office and the Inter-American Court on Human Rights are among the bodies that have called for Mexico to repeal the policy. The Mexican government argues that it is a necessary tool to combat criminal activity and protect judges. However, in a country where cases can drag on for years without conclusion and only one in five of those charged are convicted, critics say the policy violates citizens' rights. According to a 2023 census of Federal and State Penitentiary Systems, four out of every ten people in Mexican prisons had not yet been convicted. The previous court declined to take up the issue in its final days.
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While the previous court made historic rulings in 2021 and 2023 to expand access to abortion, the new court will likely have to rule on challenges to states that still have abortion listed as a crime in their penal codes. The court's 2023 ruling invalidated all federal criminal penalties, stating that they were an unconstitutional violation of women's human rights. However, under Mexico's legal system, the ruling did not apply to state statutes, which must be changed on a state-by-state basis.
Previous courts have handed down decisions expanding transgender rights, for example, by ruling that civil registry offices must allow transgender people to change the gender on their birth certificate through an administrative procedure without having to go before a judge. The court extended that right to children in 2022. However, according to Human Rights Watch, only seven of Mexico's 32 states allow children to modify their identity documents to reflect their self-perceived gender identity.
In 2023, Mexico's governing party rammed changes to laws governing the mining sector through Congress with little or no debate. The changes included reducing the maximum length of concessions from 50 to 30 years and punishing speculation by allowing authorities to cancel concessions if no work is done on them within two years. The mining industry, a large part of which is foreign, has drawn complaints due to ecological damage, speculation, and the fact that communities around the mines remain among the poorest in Mexico.
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