Mexico’s Supreme Court, long considered a bulwark of judicial independence in Latin America, has entered uncharted territory. On Monday, September 1, 2025, the country’s first popularly elected Supreme Court was officially seated, marking the beginning of a new era for the judiciary—and raising thorny questions about the separation of powers, political influence, and the very nature of justice in Mexico.
The new court, comprised of nine justices, includes just three with prior Supreme Court experience. Among the six newcomers is court president Hugo Aguilar, a lawyer renowned for his work defending Indigenous rights. Their arrival follows a sweeping constitutional change passed in September 2024, which replaced half of Mexico’s federal judiciary with judges chosen by popular vote. According to Human Rights Watch, this is a global first: Mexico is now the only country where “the totality of the judges are elected through universal vote.”
The move to judicial elections was spearheaded by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who often clashed with judges skeptical of his agenda. López Obrador argued that electing judges would make them more accountable and less susceptible to corruption. Critics, however, warned that the reform risked politicizing the courts and eroding their independence. As Juanita Goebertus Estrada, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, put it, “Far from being an effort to make the judiciary more democratic and efficient, the judicial reform is likely to make it more loyal to the government.”
The process leading up to the June 1, 2025 elections was anything but smooth. Judicial candidates were supposed to be shortlisted by three evaluation committees—one each appointed by the president, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. But in January 2025, the Federal Judiciary’s Evaluation Committee resigned after a court order suspended its work, and the Senate, dominated by the ruling Morena party and its allies, took over. The criteria for shortlisting candidates were vague—qualities like honesty, reputation, and competence were assessed based on short motivation letters and five references from “neighbors, colleagues or other people.” The evaluation committees, lacking clear bylaws, were forced to review roughly 40 applications per day, including weekends, according to the Observatory of Judicial Reform, a coalition of human rights groups.
Once the shortlist was compiled, a random draw determined which candidates could actually run for office. The result? A dizzying 7,700 candidates competing for more than 2,600 judicial positions, including 800 federal justices and 1,800 local judges. Yet, voter enthusiasm was tepid at best. Only 13 percent of eligible voters turned out, a figure the Organization of American States (OAS) described as “one of the lowest levels of electoral participation in the region.”
The Supreme Court itself is now under special scrutiny. Of its nine members, six were selected through this new electoral process, their names appearing on so-called “cheat sheets” distributed online and in print, urging voters to support a particular slate aligned with the governing party. OAS observers flagged this, along with a lack of transparency in campaign financing, as serious flaws. The remaining three justices had been appointed earlier by López Obrador. “If the court wants to ensure its independence, it cannot rule in a partisan manner simply to support the government’s position,” warned Juanita Goebertus of Human Rights Watch. “It must base its positions on law.”
The stakes for Mexico’s justice system are enormous. The Supreme Court faces a backlog of nearly 1,400 cases, many of which touch on deeply contentious issues. One of the most controversial is mandatory pretrial detention. Under López Obrador, the list of crimes requiring automatic jail time before trial was expanded to include some nonviolent offenses. This policy has drawn sharp international criticism, with the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Inter-American Court on Human Rights both calling for its repeal. Critics argue the measure violates international treaties Mexico has signed and exacerbates an already dire situation: in 2023, four out of every ten people in Mexican prisons had not been convicted of any crime, according to the Federal and State Penitentiary Systems census.
Abortion access is another flashpoint. While the previous court made landmark rulings in 2021 and 2023, striking down federal criminal penalties for abortion as unconstitutional, state-level laws remain unchanged in many parts of the country. The new court will likely be called upon to resolve challenges to these lingering state statutes. Ana Cárdenas, director of justice projects in Mexico for the World Justice Project, noted that uncertainty will persist until the court signals whether it will uphold the progressive legal reasoning of its predecessors.
Transgender rights have also seen incremental progress. In 2022, the Supreme Court extended the right for children to change the gender on their birth certificates through an administrative process, bypassing the need for a judge. Yet, as Human Rights Watch reports, only seven of Mexico’s 32 states allow children to modify their identity documents accordingly. The new court may soon be asked to address these disparities.
Economic and environmental concerns are also on the docket. In 2023, the Morena-dominated Congress passed laws slashing the maximum length of mining concessions from 50 to 30 years and empowering authorities to cancel concessions if no work is done within two years. These changes, which critics argue were rushed through with little debate, are now being challenged in court. The mining sector, much of it foreign-owned, has long faced accusations of ecological damage and failing to benefit local communities.
Meanwhile, the new constitutional framework has established a Judicial Discipline Tribunal, whose five members were also elected by popular vote. This tribunal holds sweeping powers to sanction or remove judges for rulings deemed to contradict the constitution or established law. Human Rights Watch and the United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers have both raised alarms, emphasizing the need for judicial tenure and non-political appointment processes to safeguard impartiality.
Looking ahead, the transformation is only half complete. The other half of Mexico’s federal judiciary is set to be elected in 2027, and human rights advocates are already calling for major reforms—or even the abrogation—of the current system before then. Human Rights Watch, for one, urges Mexican authorities to “provide serious safeguards to ensure the integrity of the next round of judicial elections.”
As the new Supreme Court takes its seat and begins to grapple with a daunting caseload, the world will be watching to see whether Mexico’s experiment with judicial democracy delivers more justice—or simply more politics in the courtroom.
