Mexico to elect all judges, sparking debate and concern
MEXICO CITY: Mexico is set to become the world's only country to let voters elect all of their judges, sparking sharp disagreement about whether the reforms will diminish or strengthen criminal influence over the courts.
The government says the unprecedented popular vote for judges and magistrates at all levels -- including the Supreme Court -- is needed to address rampant corruption and impunity.
Critics argue it will undermine the judiciary's independence and warn the participation of controversial candidates -- such as a former lawyer for notorious drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman -- means it is doomed to backfire.
On Sunday, voters will choose several thousand federal, district and local judges and magistrates. Another election for the remainder will be held in 2027.
Not just anybody can run for one of these jobs. Candidates must have a law degree, experience in legal affairs, what is termed 'a good reputation,' and no criminal record.
Opponents, including judicial workers, have held a series of mass street protests in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the reforms.
'Justice is not something you vote for' and it needs people with experience and specialized knowledge, said Olimpia Rojas Luviano, a 28-year-old lawyer.
But Maria del Rocio Morales, a judge who is standing to be a magistrate in the capital, said she was happy to take part.
'For the good of my city and my country, I will do it,' she said.
President Claudia Sheinbaum has played down signs that many voters are unlikely to take part in the vote .
'People are very intelligent and know who they are going to vote for,' the veteran left-winger said.
According to surveys by the El Universal and El Pais newspapers, only half of voters know the election date, and only four out of 10 are certain they will participate.
'Rotten' judiciary
While judicial elections are not new -- the United States and Bolivia, for instance, allow voters to pick some judges -- Mexico will be the only nation to elect them at all levels.
The reform was championed by Sheinbaum's predecessor and mentor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who criticized the judicial system as 'rotten,' corrupt and serving the interests of the political and economic elite.
Mexico has a long history of human rights violations that remain unpunished, including the disappearance of 43 students from a teacher training college in 2014, allegedly at the hands of drug traffickers and corrupt authorities.
Despite dozens of arrests, there have been no convictions.
Mexico's criminal justice system 'is profoundly ineffective at ensuring accountability for criminal violence and abuses by security forces,' according to New York-based Human Right Watch.
Lopez Obrador frequently clashed with the judiciary, in particular the Supreme Court, which impeded some of his policies.
Sheinbaum, who replaced him in October, is a staunch supporter of the sweeping changes. Her opponents say they will eliminate democratic checks and balances.
Sheinbaum's ruling party already dominates both houses of Congress.
Opponents warn that elected judges could be more vulnerable to pressure from criminals, in a country where powerful drug cartels regularly use bribery and intimidation to influence officials.
Rights group Defensorxs has identified around 20 candidates it considers 'high risk' for reasons including allegations of cartel links, corruption and sexual abuse, even though one of the requirements for running is to have no criminal record.
These people include Silvia Delgado, a former lawyer for 'El Chapo,' the Sinaloa cartel co-founder imprisoned in the United States.
Defensorxs describes her as a candidate who 'defends alleged drug traffickers.'
Delgado, who is standing to be a judge in the northern state of Chihuahua, told AFP: 'Every person has the right to counsel.'
Another controversial candidate seeking to be a district judge in the northern state of Durango served prison time in the United States for drug crimes, according to Defensorxs.
A major concern for voters is the complexity of a vote that will require people in Mexico City to mark nine ballots for local and federal judges.
'I think even the people who devised it don't know how to do it,' said Rojas Luviano.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
7 hours ago
- The Star
Immigrants scramble for clarity after Supreme Court birthright ruling
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling tied to birthright citizenship prompted confusion and phone calls to lawyers as people who could be affected tried to process a convoluted legal decision with major humanitarian implications. The court's conservative majority on Friday granted President Donald Trump his request to curb federal judges' power but did not decide the legality of his bid to restrict birthright citizenship. That outcome has raised more questions than answers about a right long understood to be guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution: that anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen at birth, regardless of their parents' citizenship or legal status. Lorena, a 24-year-old Colombian asylum seeker who lives in Houston and is due to give birth in September, pored over media reports on Friday morning. She was looking for details about how her baby might be affected, but said she was left confused and worried. "There are not many specifics," said Lorena, who like others interviewed by Reuters asked to be identified by her first name out of fear for her safety. "I don't understand it well." She is concerned that her baby could end up with no nationality. "I don't know if I can give her mine," she said. "I also don't know how it would work, if I can add her to my asylum case. I don't want her to be adrift with no nationality." Trump, a Republican, issued an order after taking office in January that directed U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident. The order was blocked by three separate U.S. district court judges, sending the case on a path to the Supreme Court. The resulting decision said Trump's policy could go into effect in 30 days but appeared to leave open the possibility of further proceedings in the lower courts that could keep the policy blocked. On Friday afternoon, plaintiffs filed an amended lawsuit in federal court in Maryland seeking to establish a nationwide class of people whose children could be denied citizenship. If they are not blocked nationwide, the restrictions could be applied in the 28 states that did not contest them in court, creating "an extremely confusing patchwork" across the country, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst for the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. "Would individual doctors, individual hospitals be having to try to figure out how to determine the citizenship of babies and their parents?" she said. The drive to restrict birthright citizenship is part of Trump's broader immigration crackdown, and he has framed automatic citizenship as a magnet for people to come to give birth. "Hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into our country under birthright citizenship, and it wasn't meant for that reason," he said during a White House press briefing on Friday. WORRIED CALLS Immigration advocates and lawyers in some Republican-led states said they received calls from a wide range of pregnant immigrants and their partners following the ruling. They were grappling with how to explain it to clients who could be dramatically affected, given all the unknowns of how future litigation would play out or how the executive order would be implemented state by state. Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance said she got a call on Friday from an East Asian temporary visa holder with a pregnant wife. He was anxious because Ohio is not one of the plaintiff states and wanted to know how he could protect his child's rights. "He kept stressing that he was very interested in the rights included in the Constitution," she said. Advocates underscored the gravity of Trump's restrictions, which would block an estimated 150,000 children born in the U.S. annually from receiving automatic citizenship. "It really creates different classes of people in the country with different types of rights," said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, a spokesperson for the immigrant rights organization United We Dream. "That is really chaotic." Adding uncertainty, the Supreme Court ruled that members of two plaintiff groups in the litigation - CASA, an immigrant advocacy service in Maryland, and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project - would still be covered by lower court blocks on the policy. Whether someone in a state where Trump's policy could go into effect could join one of the organizations to avoid the restrictions or how state or federal officials would check for membership remained unclear. Betsy, a U.S. citizen who recently graduated from high school in Virginia and a CASA member, said both of her parents came to the U.S. from El Salvador two decades ago and lacked legal status when she was born. "I feel like it targets these innocent kids who haven't even been born," she said, declining to give her last name for concerns over her family's safety. Nivida, a Honduran asylum seeker in Louisiana, is a member of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and recently gave birth. She heard on Friday from a friend without legal status who is pregnant and wondersabout the situation under Louisiana's Republican governor, since the state is not one of those fighting Trump's order. "She called me very worried and asked what's going to happen," she said. "If her child is born in Louisiana … is the baby going to be a citizen?" (Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Amy Stevens and Sam Holmes)
The Star
7 hours ago
- The Star
Trump wins as Supreme Court curbs judges, but may yet lose on birthright citizenship
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling blunting a potent weapon that federal judges have used to block government policies nationwide during legal challenges was in many ways a victory for President Donald Trump, except perhaps on the very policy he is seeking to enforce. An executive order that the Republican president signed on his first day back in office in January would restrict birthright citizenship - a far-reaching plan that three federal judges, questioning its constitutionality, quickly halted nationwide through so-called "universal" injunctions. But the Supreme Court's ruling on Friday, while announcing a dramatic shift in how judges have operated for years deploying such relief, left enough room for the challengers to Trump's directive to try to prevent it from taking effect while litigation over its legality plays out. "I do not expect the president's executive order on birthright citizenship will ever go into effect," said Samuel Bray, a Notre Dame Law School professor and a prominent critic of universal injunctions whose work the court's majority cited extensively in Friday's ruling. Trump's executive order directs federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a "green card" holder. The three judges found that the order likely violates citizenship language in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. The directive remains blocked while lower courts reconsider the scope of their injunctions, and the Supreme Court said it cannot take effect for 30 days, a window that gives the challengers time to seek further protection from those courts. The court's six conservative justices delivered the majority ruling, granting Trump's request to narrow the injunctions issued by the judges in Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts. Its three liberal members dissented. The ruling by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who Trump appointed to the court in 2020, emphasized the need to hem in the power of judges, warning against an "imperial" judiciary. Judges can provide "complete relief" only to the plaintiffs before them, Barrett wrote. A HOST OF POLICIES That outcome was a major victory for Trump and his allies, who have repeatedly denounced judges who have impeded his agenda. It could make it easier for the administration to implement his policies, including to accelerate deportations of migrants, restrict transgender rights, curtail diversity and inclusion efforts, and downsize the federal government - many of which have tested the limits of executive power. In the birthright citizenship dispute, the ruling left open the potential for individual plaintiffs to seek relief beyond themselves through class action lawsuits targeting a policy that would upend the long-held understanding that the Constitution confers citizenship on virtually anyone born on U.S. soil. Bray said he expects a surge of new class action cases, resulting in "class-protective" injunctions. "Given that the birthright-citizenship executive order is unconstitutional, I expect courts will grant those preliminary injunctions, and they will be affirmed on appeal," Bray said. Some of the challengers have already taken that path. Plaintiffs in the Maryland case, including expectant mothers and immigrant advocacy groups, asked the presiding judge who had issued a universal injunction to treat the case as a class action to protect all children who would be ineligible for birthright citizenship if the executive order takes effect. "I think in terms of the scope of the relief that we'll ultimately get, there is no difference," said William Powell, one of the lawyers for the Maryland plaintiffs. "We're going to be able to get protection through the class action for everyone in the country whose baby could potentially be covered by the executive order, assuming we succeed." The ruling also sidestepped a key question over whether states that bring lawsuits might need an injunction that applies beyond their borders to address their alleged harms, directing lower courts to answer it first. STATES CHALLENGE DIRECTIVE The challenge to Trump's directive also included 22 states, most of them Democratic-governed, who argued that the financial and administrative burdens they would face required a nationwide block on Trump's order. George Mason University constitutional law expert Ilya Somin said the practical consequences of the ruling will depend on various issues not decided so far by the Supreme Court. "As the majority recognizes, states may be entitled to much broader relief than individuals or private groups," Somin said. New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, a Democrat who helped lead the case brought in Massachusetts, disagreed with the ruling but sketched out a path forward on Friday. The ruling, Platkin said in a statement, "recognized that nationwide orders can be appropriate to protect the plaintiffs themselves from harm - which is true, and has always been true, in our case." Platkin committed to "keep challenging President Trump's flagrantly unlawful order, which strips American babies of citizenship for the first time since the Civil War" of 1861-1865. Legal experts said they expect a lot of legal maneuvering in lower courts in the weeks ahead, and the challengers still face an uphill battle. Compared to injunctions in individual cases, class actions are often harder to successfully mount. States, too, still do not know whether they have the requisite legal entitlement to sue. Trump's administration said they do not, but the court left that debate unresolved. Meanwhile, the 30-day clock is ticking. If the challengers are unsuccessful going forward, Trump's order could apply in some parts of the country, but not others. "The ruling is set to go into effect 30 days from now and leaves families in states across the country in deep uncertainty about whether their children will be born as U.S. citizens," said Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law School's immigrants' rights clinic. (Reporting by Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by John Kruzel, Nate Raymond, Jan Wolfe and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Will Dunham)
The Sun
10 hours ago
- The Sun
Trump wins Supreme Court ruling but birthright citizenship fight continues
WASHINGTON: The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling blunting a potent weapon that federal judges have used to block government policies nationwide during legal challenges was in many ways a victory for President Donald Trump, except perhaps on the very policy he is seeking to enforce. An executive order that the Republican president signed on his first day back in office in January would restrict birthright citizenship - a far-reaching plan that three federal judges, questioning its constitutionality, quickly halted nationwide through so-called 'universal' injunctions. But the Supreme Court's ruling on Friday, while announcing a dramatic shift in how judges have operated for years deploying such relief, left enough room for the challengers to Trump's directive to try to prevent it from taking effect while litigation over its legality plays out. 'I do not expect the president's executive order on birthright citizenship will ever go into effect,' said Samuel Bray, a Notre Dame Law School professor and a prominent critic of universal injunctions whose work the court's majority cited extensively in Friday's ruling. Trump's executive order directs federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a 'green card' holder. The three judges found that the order likely violates citizenship language in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. The directive remains blocked while lower courts reconsider the scope of their injunctions, and the Supreme Court said it cannot take effect for 30 days, a window that gives the challengers time to seek further protection from those courts. The court's six conservative justices delivered the majority ruling, granting Trump's request to narrow the injunctions issued by the judges in Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts. Its three liberal members dissented. The ruling by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who Trump appointed to the court in 2020, emphasized the need to hem in the power of judges, warning against an 'imperial' judiciary. Judges can provide 'complete relief' only to the plaintiffs before them, Barrett wrote. A HOST OF POLICIES That outcome was a major victory for Trump and his allies, who have repeatedly denounced judges who have impeded his agenda. It could make it easier for the administration to implement his policies, including to accelerate deportations of migrants, restrict transgender rights, curtail diversity and inclusion efforts, and downsize the federal government - many of which have tested the limits of executive power. In the birthright citizenship dispute, the ruling left open the potential for individual plaintiffs to seek relief beyond themselves through class action lawsuits targeting a policy that would upend the long-held understanding that the Constitution confers citizenship on virtually anyone born on U.S. soil. Bray said he expects a surge of new class action cases, resulting in 'class-protective' injunctions. 'Given that the birthright-citizenship executive order is unconstitutional, I expect courts will grant those preliminary injunctions, and they will be affirmed on appeal,' Bray said. Some of the challengers have already taken that path. Plaintiffs in the Maryland case, including expectant mothers and immigrant advocacy groups, asked the presiding judge who had issued a universal injunction to treat the case as a class action to protect all children who would be ineligible for birthright citizenship if the executive order takes effect. 'I think in terms of the scope of the relief that we'll ultimately get, there is no difference,' said William Powell, one of the lawyers for the Maryland plaintiffs. 'We're going to be able to get protection through the class action for everyone in the country whose baby could potentially be covered by the executive order, assuming we succeed.' The ruling also sidestepped a key question over whether states that bring lawsuits might need an injunction that applies beyond their borders to address their alleged harms, directing lower courts to answer it first. STATES CHALLENGE DIRECTIVE The challenge to Trump's directive also included 22 states, most of them Democratic-governed, who argued that the financial and administrative burdens they would face required a nationwide block on Trump's order. George Mason University constitutional law expert Ilya Somin said the practical consequences of the ruling will depend on various issues not decided so far by the Supreme Court. 'As the majority recognizes, states may be entitled to much broader relief than individuals or private groups,' Somin said. New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, a Democrat who helped lead the case brought in Massachusetts, disagreed with the ruling but sketched out a path forward on Friday. The ruling, Platkin said in a statement, 'recognized that nationwide orders can be appropriate to protect the plaintiffs themselves from harm - which is true, and has always been true, in our case.' Platkin committed to 'keep challenging President Trump's flagrantly unlawful order, which strips American babies of citizenship for the first time since the Civil War' of 1861-1865. Legal experts said they expect a lot of legal maneuvering in lower courts in the weeks ahead, and the challengers still face an uphill battle. Compared to injunctions in individual cases, class actions are often harder to successfully mount. States, too, still do not know whether they have the requisite legal entitlement to sue. Trump's administration said they do not, but the court left that debate unresolved. Meanwhile, the 30-day clock is ticking. If the challengers are unsuccessful going forward, Trump's order could apply in some parts of the country, but not others. 'The ruling is set to go into effect 30 days from now and leaves families in states across the country in deep uncertainty about whether their children will be born as U.S. citizens,' said Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law School's immigrants' rights clinic.
