Mexico is poised to amend its constitution this weekend to require all judges to be elected as part of a judicial overhaul championed by the outgoing president but slammed by critics as a blow to the country’s rule of law.
The amendment passed Mexico’s Congress on Wednesday, and by Thursday it already had been ratified by the required majority of the country’s 32 state legislatures. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he would sign and publish the constitutional change on Sunday.
Legal experts and international observers have said the move could endanger Mexico’s democracy by stacking courts with judges loyal to the ruling Morena party, which has a strong grip on both Congress and the presidency after big electoral wins in June.
I’ve made this point elsewhere. In Australia the Chief justices are appointed by the government based on a shortlist presented by the legal establishment. They are preeminently qualified and are above politics. Both sides of the political spectrum are fine with this system and it is not gamed.
It is utterly non-controversial and the Australian people respect the institution. Tell me again how it is absurd to remove politics from a judicial system?
If you believe anyone is above politics I have a bridge to sell you.
Well, there are degrees, aren’t there? Some judicial systems ban individual reproductive rights, allow corporations to be people and give criminal immunity to presidents, and some don’t.
Not doing that is also political
Sure, then breathing is political. So is farting.
However, certain things are actively political and dangerous to people.
If making a given ruling is political, it stands to reason that a contrary ruling would also be political. It’s not like slavery is political and abolition is apolitical, it’s just that one has a positive character and one has a negative character (in the mathematical sense).
Some things are dangerous to the people and political, some things are beneficial to the people and political. We should support a system that encourages judges to do promote the latter.
That’s hard to argue against, and I’m not going to try. It is the nature of human discourse to navigate social constructs in order to do the least damage.
It is also self-evident that the US justice system is a burning dumpster fire. It is suffering from a set of horrific issues that it largely created by the simple fact that it allows political parties to select SCOTUS judges who then directly deliver political decisions.
The only other option that keeps regularly coming up is electing judges, which is equally problematic in that popular contests soon get co-opted by politicians and dark money. Once again, how does this serve justice?
A third option that actually and demonstratively works around the world is to have a bipartisan system where a professional judicial panel creates a short list of suitable and qualified candidates from which the government makes a selection. Dark money nor naked political favouritism gets a look in and no decisions can be bought.
Now, some Americans will come at me saying that such a selection will only work in theory. But that is wrong. It works in practise right around the world in democratic countries. It is utterly non-controversial. That it is very possible to pick judges in a bipartisan way for the benefit of justice and the people.
Or, just keep doing it your own way and everything is sweet and dandy. I’m a foreigner, so what do I know?
It seems to me like all it’s accomplishing is another layer of abstraction rather than a real mechanistic distinction, but I’ve seen what “bipartisan” action looks like in the US, and the billions in arms given to Israel are a decent start. Republicans and Democrats absolutely have the capacity to collaborate and, when they do, it’s monstrous.
Voting at least gives the people a chance to resist the machinations of the bipartisan consensus and get progressives installed.
Voting also brings people like Trump into play. How do you think that will play out with Palestine should he get in again?
Look, it does actually work in Western Europe, the UK, Australia and NZ. All this talk that it can’t work is plainly wrong.
What is impossible to get around is American exceptionalism. People just can’t conceive that other systems might be better. Fine. I apologise for suggesting otherwise. Enjoy.
The same was said about the SCOTUS until recently, where it’s become very obvious it is political and has a ton of power to enact their political goals.
I’m afraid that how the US chooses SCOTUS is vastly different from ike countries, and that’s how you end up with the US having ‘unique’ judicial situations.
https://theconversation.com/unlike-us-europe-picks-top-judges-with-bipartisan-approval-to-create-ideologically-balanced-high-courts-146550
That’s just because your conservatives haven’t discovered not confirming justices. We used to have bipartisan consensus on judicial picks as well. Give it time as the other capitalist countries continue to decay and get more fascist. Relying on these moral codes and gentleman’s agreements doesn’t work once a party learns to disrupt the system.
Obama literally picked a judge the opposition said was the only one they would pick and then they still didn’t. You can’t remove politics from these systems.
Your reply assumes that the rest of the world must follow the US example. That’s not necessarily true, although there is a bit of flirtation going on here and there with fascist populism, Western countries with Western values have managed to put a choke hold on the worst.
Also, loading the SCOTUS benches with partisan picks is not exactly a new thing. FDR was doing it for the Dems in the 1930s.