MEXICO CITY — On Monday, officials unveiled a straightforward five-step procedure for registering online as a candidate for one of the nine available positions on Mexico’s Supreme Court or for numerous federal judgeships.
A brief video was presented to illustrate how simple the registration process could be. To qualify, candidates must be Mexican citizens with a valid ID, a law degree, a minimum GPA of 3.2, and must provide five letters of recommendation from acquaintances or neighbors.
Additionally, aspirants are required to submit a three-page letter expressing their motivation for wanting to serve on the Supreme Court. However, the selection may ultimately hinge on a lottery, given that thousands of candidates are anticipated.
Language barriers should not deter applicants; those who communicate in any of the roughly sixty Indigenous languages of Mexico will also be granted the opportunity to apply through a designated process.
President Claudia Sheinbaum has championed a controversial initiative to elect thousands of judges, shifting away from the previous system which demanded extensive civil service experience for promotion within the judicial ranks.
In the past, the selection of higher positions, including Supreme Court justices, was conducted by legislators based on a list of nominees provided by the executive branch.
However, beginning June 2025, this carefully structured system will be replaced with an approach requiring the public to vote for numerous lawyers, most of whom might not be familiar to the electorate.
The successful candidates will oversee complex legal matters, including racketeering, anti-monopoly legislation, intellectual property issues, and constitutional law disputes.
Arturo Zaldívar, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court and current advisor to Sheinbaum, stated that community endorsements of candidates would suffice.
“We need a judiciary that is more human, more sensitive, more diverse, that is much closer to the people,” Zaldívar noted. “Our aim is for a judiciary that serves the people of Mexico, rather than the elite.”
However, critics argue that these reforms might jeopardize judicial independence and weaken the checks and balances system, potentially allowing organized crime groups to fund candidates they prefer.
In response, the government asserts that there are protective measures in place.
For instance, individuals with criminal convictions are likely to be disqualified from the ballot. Although some prior experience is necessary, the criteria for this experience — whether as a lawyer or in judicial roles — is somewhat vague and relies heavily on the discretion of an evaluation committee.
Candidates must submit their online applications by November 24. Following this, an “evaluation committee” appointed by Congress, controlled by Sheinbaum’s Morena party, will spend several weeks narrowing down thousands of applications to a shortlist of around a dozen candidates deemed best qualified in terms of character and experience.
Subsequently, names will be randomly selected, and two or three fortunate candidates will have their names placed on the ballot on June 1 for each of the nine Supreme Court positions.
Concerns are particularly pronounced regarding the highly politicized nature of the “evaluation committee.” Recently, a similar committee assessed candidates for leadership in the government’s Human Rights Commission, where a qualified incumbent was omitted from the shortlist due to political reasons, sparking fears about the future integrity of the selection process.