What’s at stake in Mexico's judicial system under sweeping overhaul pushed by the president

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico’s governing party says judges in the current court system are corrupt, and it wants to push through an extreme proposal to make the country’s entire judicial branch — around 7,000 judges — stand for election.

While some countries like Switzerland and the United States elect some judges indirectly or at the local level, outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador wants citizens to vote on every single judge, appeals court member and justice all the way up to the Supreme Court. The president has clashed repeatedly with judges throughout his six-year term, which ends Sept. 30.

In its present form, the overhaul has drawn criticism domestically and from abroad and leaves a lot of questions to be answered. As the country's Senate prepares to debate — and likely vote in favor of — the contentious overhaul, Mexico's Supreme Court is examining if it can weigh in on challenges to the proposal.

Here is a look at some of the biggest issues at stake.

People would only need a law degree, decent grades, five years of undefined “judicial area experience” and a letter of recommendation from anyone to run for some judgeships. The candidates’ applications would be winnowed down by a committee of experts, and the names of the finalists would then be drawn from a hat, in some cases. Supreme Court justices would require 10 years' experience, but would also be elected.

But many questions remain unanswered, including, for example, how many names would be on the ballots. Hundreds, or potentially thousands, of relatively unknown people could be running for these positions.

Would voters research and read the resumes of all these people, or would political parties simply hand out a list of their preferred candidates to supporters?

It's also not clear who would pay for the candidates' election campaigns.

While the proposal sets limits on campaigning and spending, people who are willing to finance a judgeship candidate may well be those who have a vested interest in court cases.

Judges and court secretaries (something like assistant judges) currently work their way up to higher positions by periodic reviews and evaluation committees.

There are clearly problems with cronyism and favoritism in the current model, and it isn't very good at punishing corrupt judges. At the highest levels, some are nominated or selected by the legislative or executive branches.

It would create so-called faceless judges to hear organized crime cases, to protect their identities and avoid reprisals, threats or pressure against them.

It would create a judicial disciplinary committee that could rule not just on judicial misconduct like bribes, mishandling evidence or improper delays, but also conduct investigations into judges for their legal reasoning.

It would reduce the Supreme Court from 11 justices to nine, and their terms to 12 years from the current 15.

The overhaul has to be approved by the two chambers of Congress. The lower chamber, dominated by the governing party, has already voted in favor by a wide margin. The measure is now headed to the Senate, where it's expected to pass by a razor-thin margin. It must then win approval in 17 of the country’s 32 state legislatures, where the governing party also appears to have sufficient votes.

Once enacted, apart from the cost and time involved in organizing such massive elections, the current judges would all have to be fired and given severance pay. Fired judges could run as candidates. Many of the newly elected judges would be walking into specialized courtrooms and appeals courts that they have never seen or argued cases in before. The learning curve could be long.

The governing party says letting voters decide would make judges more responsive to the popular will and make it easier to punish bad ones.

But in Mexico, the main problem isn't that corrupt judges dismiss too many cases. It’s that police and prosecutors are so ill-trained and overwhelmed that more than 90% of crimes are never brought to court at all.

In 2009, Bolivia implemented voting for some judgeships, but a lot of voters turned in blank ballots and the process has been frozen for the time being.

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