How can judicial independence be strengthened in a world of increasing political and economic pressures? In this interview, Margaret Satterthwaite explores innovative solutions and challenges facing justice systems in Latin America and beyond.
In this blog post, we document and analyse the numerous apparent breaches of international law that have occurred within the first six weeks of the 2025 Trump administration. What began as an informal discussion at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law has evolved into this analytical overview. We believe this documentation serves both academic purposes and potentially supports future legal proceedings. While defenders of these actions will undoubtedly offer justifications for what we identify as clear breaches of international law, our analysis aims to provide an assessment based on established international legal principles.
On 27 February, the Mexican government transferred 29 alleged drug lords to the US. Instead of undergoing the due process required for extradition, they were simply removed of their cells, put on a plane and sent to the USA. This act was termed a “deliver” by Mexico, while the US called it a “expulsion”. This is not just a semantic issue. While combating organised crime is crucial, by bypassing the rules for extradition, Mexico disregarded the rule of law and set a dangerous precedent for sovereignty and the protection of fundamental rights.
On September 11, 2024, the Senate of Mexico approved the controversial judicial reform. The ruling party, MORENA, achieved adopting the judicial reform thanks to a qualified majority in Congress and Senate. In this blogpost, we show that the way in which the judiciary reform was passed in the Senate cannot be considered as “expressing the will of the people”. We suggest that the very way in which the Senate vote came to pass is undermining one main justification of the judiciary reform, namely that it will lead to a judiciary “of the people”.
The final act of Mexican President López Obrador will be in collaboration with the president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum and the newly elected Congress. Among other things, in a move that goes beyond anything found in other prominent backsliding states such as Hungary or Poland, it introduces the popular election of all sitting judges across the Federal Judiciary, including Supreme Court Justices, every 9 and 12 years respectively. In an open letter, legal scholars, judges, policymakers and practitioners from various regions of the world have expressed deep concern over the potential consequences that the popular election of judges may have on judicial independence, the rule of law, and the safeguarding of rights and freedoms in Mexico.
Mexico is about to adopt a constitutional amendment to reform the judicial branch. While framed as an attempt to restore the legitimacy and independence of the judiciary, it is, in reality, aimed at capturing the judiciary. In this blogpost, I discuss a key strategy that enabled this judicial overhaul: the President’s persistent and systematic defamatory attacks on the judiciary. I argue that to facing the threat of institutional defamation, we must recognize the importance of the right to reputation.
It is time to take the present threat as what it is: the most serious threat to Mexico’s constitutional democracy at least since the slow start of the democratic transition in the late 1970’s. The constitutional amendment to the judiciary will translate into an incommensurable retrocession in terms of professionalization and judicial independence building. The day after the amendment is passed, Mexico will officially be less democratic and more authoritarian in that the scrutiny of the exercise of public power would have been put at great risk.
Am 5. April 2024 drangen in der ecuadorianischen Hauptstadt Quito Polizeieinheiten in die Botschaft von Mexiko ein, um den ehemaligen Vizepräsidenten Ecuadors, Jorge David Glas Espinel, zu ergreifen. In der internationalen Gemeinschaft löste die Erstürmung der Botschaft Entrüstung aus. Die mexikanische Regierung erwägt nunmehr, Ecuador in der Angelegenheit vor dem Internationalen Gerichtshof in Den Haag zu verklagen. Eine solche Klage dürfte erfolgreich sein, auch wenn die mexikanische Position nicht in Gänze unproblematisch ist, da die Gewährung der Zuflucht in der Botschaft nach den lateinamerikanischen Völkerrechtsregeln rechtswidrig sein könnte.
In a historical march, tens of thousands of judicial staff, lawyers, and judges – including at least one justice of the Supreme Court – took to the streets of Mexico City on 22 October 2023. Chanting slogans such as ‘¡El Poder Judicial de la Federación no se toca!’ and ‘¡Somos los garantes de la Constitución!’ protesters rallied against the Mexican government’s plans to slash the federal judiciary’s (Poder Judicial de la Federación, PJF) funding. In this contribution, we analyse what this dispute is all about and explain why the government’s plans jeopardise the independence of the Mexican judiciary. In particular, we argue that the recent, seemingly innocent financial measures come at the cusp of an alarming authoritarian turn. Finally, we offer some tentative thoughts on what the endgame in this quickly escalating dispute might look like.
The last week of the legislative term in Mexico was just another showcase of the clear government's disdain for democratic institutions and the rule of law. At the end of April, MORENA, the party in government, used its legislative majorities to hastily pass a series of laws in violation of different procedural rules, including quorum rules. The episode described above isn’t uncommon in Mexico’s legislative politics. The quality of the political-constitutional discourse is in great need of improvement to prevent such episodes from happening. It seems that the Supreme Court is the only institution that could contribute (and has been trying to contribute) to repair it. However, in the current political environment, Supreme Court interventions in political processes are becoming increasingly dangerous to the extent that its survival is at stake.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters