Mexico’s lower house of Congress approved sweeping new measures on Wednesday that would prevent legal challenges to constitutional amendments, allowing lawmakers to reshape the country’s charter without any judicial review — even from the Supreme Court.
The bill, which was already passed by the Senate last week, has drawn criticism from legal scholars and human rights experts, who say it would bulldoze any judicial oversight of constitutional matters and hand the ruling Morena party seemingly unchecked power to pass profound changes to the laws governing the nation.
Specific details of the bill will be ironed out overnight. Most state legislatures are expected to approve the measure in the coming days, paving the way for the president to sign it into law.
The move comes at a tense moment for Mexico, in which the major branches of government barreling toward open conflict over the fundamental makeup of the judicial system and the role it should play in the country’s democracy.
“This reform, if it passes, does place us in a context of an exercise of unlimited power,” said Guadalupe Salmorán Villar, a researcher on global rule of law and constitutional democracy based in Mexico City. “It’s an overt attempt by the federal government, with the support of the large congressional majority of Morena and its allies, to politically subjugate the judiciary.”
Olga Sánchez Cordero, a Morena lawmaker, said that while the initiative would bar courts from weighing in on the content of constitutional amendments, it would not prohibit challenges on procedural grounds. Until now, she said, the Constitution has not been clear on how changes to the charter could be revised, but now there would be “a clear, explicit, unequivocal mechanism” for evaluating them.
Asked if she was concerned that in the future, an opposition majority in Congress could use the new bill to push through constitutional changes that threaten human rights, such as criminalizing abortion, Ms. Sánchez Cordero replied: “I hope I am dead by then.”
How did Mexico get here?
This fight over Mexico’s courts started, essentially, when the ruling Morena party and its allies won landslide victories in elections this summer, giving them effective congressional supermajorities.
They used that power to pass a major judicial overhaul last month. This new measure appears to be a direct response to efforts to block that overhaul.
The latest salvo: The country’s Supreme Court is set to discuss a resolution next week that would invalidate key elements of the overhaul, putting it on a collision course with the legislature and, perhaps, the president.
Ricardo Monreal, the ruling party’s leader in the lower house, has already said that even if a majority of justices approve the resolution, lawmakers would not recognize it as valid.
The judicial redesign requires the popular election of judges, including Supreme Court justices, and subjects them to review by a disciplinary tribunal made up of elected officials with broad powers to investigate and even impeach judges.
Proponents say it will help rid the court system of corruption and nepotism. Critics argue it will only erode judicial independence and politicize the courts.
The overhaul was met with a tsunami of more than 500 legal actions seeking to block its approval and implementation by civic groups, opposition politicians and judges themselves.
Instead of formally appealing those rulings, lawmakers and the new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, have opted for a more simple route: They’ve disregarded them.
“A judge is not above the people of Mexico,” Ms. Sheinbaum told reporters earlier this month, adding that voters granted her government a broad mandate to enact constitutional changes.
How significant is the new change?
The new proposal appears to be an effort to neutralize the opposition to the ruling party’s legislative agenda, experts said.
If it’s approved, Mexico would not be alone in enacting measures to constrain the powers of the court system. Other countries have, too, tried to do the same.
In the 1970s, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended many constitutional rights, an amendment gave the Indian Parliament unrestricted power to change the Constitution and removed the power of judicial review from the courts.
In 2013, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, whose party enjoyed a two-thirds majority in Parliament, passed a provision stating that the constitutional court was not allowed to examine the content of a constitutional amendment, only the procedure.
In Mexico, critics warned that the effort could prove costly for the country’s young democracy.
“If tomorrow this majority or the next one decides to reinstate the death penalty, well, what that tells us is that the courts can’t do anything about it,” said Javier Martín Reyes, a law professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “The moment you add something to the Constitution, it becomes untouchable.”
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