The Indicator from Planet Money - Should we vote for all judges?

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Mexico is gearing up to directly elect federal and state judges for the first time this June. President Claudia Sheinbaum says the new system will combat nepotism and increase the integrity of the courts. But critics see it as a naked attempt to dilute the court's independence. Today on the show, how Mexico's judicial reforms are creating angst for businesses at home and abroad. Related episodes: SCOTUS: De-facto pro-business? For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Cooper Katz-McKim. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. Over the last few years, we've heard a lot about investment in manufacturing booming in Mexico. This was a big deal a couple of years ago when the country became the United States' number one trading partner. Banks and credit rating agencies are now warning that Mexico's growth could be in jeopardy. And it's not just because of the ongoing trade war. They're pointing to judicial reform. Joining us today to talk about those reforms is our researcher and fact-checker Sierra Juarez. Nice to have you on this side of the mic.

Thank you, Darian. It's so nice to be here. So starting this year, every single judge in Mexico, both local and federal, will be elected by the people instead of appointed. Yasmin Robles-Cortez is one of those judges, and she says the changes are going to be challenging. We aren't politicians. We aren't trained for that. Today on the show, the debate over judicial reform in Mexico. Why is it happening now? What could the consequences be? And how uncertainty over this big change is creating an unsettling business environment in Mexico

and potentially threatening its commercial relationship with the U.S. To really understand what's going on in Mexico right now, we need to look back to the 1990s. Back then, Mexico had an economist as its president, and he wanted to make the judicial branch more professional. David Lopez is an attorney. He also wrote the English language text work on Mexican law that everyone seems to use. Mexico altered its judicial institutions to increase judicial independence, to increase the quality of the courts, and to increase the discipline of federal judges. But there were critics of the system. They said that it allowed the judiciary to continue to be pretty elitist. The fear was that a lot of wealthy or well-connected people were ending up in judicial

positions. They then favored their wealthy or well-connected friends, both in their judicial decisions and their hiring practices. One estimate from Itam University in Mexico said that yes, about half of the federal judges in Mexico have at least one family member working in the regional court system. And it's worth mentioning the researcher behind that study said the numbers alone weren't evidence of nepotism per se. Either way, this is the historical context for what's happening today. So both former president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, better known as Amlo, and his protege, the current president, Claudia Seenbaum, said the system was rife with nepotism, not to mention corruption, and reform was needed. Amlo pushed through the policy change to elect

judges in his final days as president last September. And since he left office, Shane Baum has been in This is the enthusiastically rolling it out. This is the defense of the people of Mexico, for justice, for honesty, for integrity, and for eradicating Mexico of what has caused so much harm to our country, which is corruption. Nepotism is corruption in the judiciary. David says there are questions, though,

on whether combating nepotism is the real reason behind the reform. Instead, he points to Amlo's prickly relationship with judges when he was president. He continually ran into issues with the judiciary, the federal judiciary, in particular, so that many of the social reforms, political reforms, and legal reforms that he wanted to bring into existence, he met opposition. Amlo and the political party he founded, Morena, are popular in Mexico. They have the majority in both the House and the Senate. Claudia Shane Baum is part of the party too.

David says Amlo chose to wield that power. He decided to use that political power to essentially eliminate his largest opponent, which is the Mexican judiciary. Starting this year, citizens will vote on judges from state-level positions to the Supreme Court justices. The elections will take place in two rounds. half of the country's judges will run in June

and the second half will run in 27. The idea is to democratize the judicial system and have judges reflect regular people instead of a fancy judge calling the shots. Yasmin, the federal judge we heard from earlier, is planning to run. She says under the new system, she'll be running against some people with lesser credentials.

In the final stage of my class, There were about 1,800 or 1,900 people registered, and only 30 of us made it. Access was so limited. You had to have very good grades. Now they've changed it, and it's good enough to have an 80% in your undergraduate degree. Even the requirements for a Supreme Court judge have changed. They've lowered the grading requirements, but have added a three-page essay explaining why you want the position and are asking for a few references from neighbors or colleagues.

And as you might expect, they got a lot of judge applications, nearly 50,000 of them. Everyone wants to be a judge. This could be a new reality TV show, just saying. So from there, the list was whittled down through a screening process and a random lottery chore. A big portion of the final 4,000 candidates are actually current sitting judges like Yasmin. They're automatically put on the ballots if they choose to run. I know that in some parts of the United States, the public can vote on local, and state court judges.

And when I go to vote, it always takes me forever to read up on everyone. That's one of the reasons that the U.S. and basically every other country doesn't allow the public to choose judges at the top level. David, our legal expert, says there is an argument for experts

making those decisions. I think that when the founding fathers were creating the federal judiciary, they felt that the voters may not be the best person, persons to decide on the qualification of federal judges. Another argument is that it helps shield judges from voters if they make unpopular but constitutionally sound decisions. And so the big question is, will voters choose judges who have the training and expertise they need, especially when it comes to antitrust, intellectual property and tax

cases, which can be very complicated? Most of the experts I spoke to said it's way too soon to say for sure. Still, fear of the unknown has already done some damage to Mexico's reputation. We spoke to Moody's who warned that a downgrade to Mexico's credit rating could be coming soon, partly because of the reform. The ratings agency said the judiciary used to help balance out the will of the president in Congress. But without a good safeguard, they could pass what Moody's called radical legal changes. It says some international companies won't want to take on that much risk. Mexican President Seambaum said these worries are way overblown. No American entrepreneur or any businesses in any other country, nor Mexicans, have anything

to fear about the judicial reform. On the contrary, we are cleaning up the judiciary. For her part, Yasmin worries that the judicial overhaul creates more problems than it solves. It wouldn't benefit us as Mexicans, and I'm just to say, telling you this, not as a judge, but as a citizen, it could create devaluation of the peso. We have to create the legal certainty that ensures investment can come to the country. Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico says that the reform is threatening the historic commercial relationship between the two countries.

Either way, with Mexico's trade with the U.S. at 30% of its GDP, Mexico has a lot to lose, whether from the issue of judges or from the ongoing trade spats. This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie with engineering by Jimmy Kearley and Robert Rodriguez, who's fact-checked by Cooper Casme Kim. Cake and Cannon is our editor and The Indicator is a production of NPR.