Breathe
By Leticia Bonifaz
Last week, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation dismissed unconstitutionality actions filed by three opposition political parties. It took just one vote to reverse a reform that is presented as a great solution to the problems we have in the administration of justice, but which, unfortunately, we are far from achieving.
The upcoming election will be costly, and I dare to anticipate that it will have little citizen participation. If all the calls from the judges to support their movement to prevent their removal had little echo, why would there suddenly be an interest in the population to elect a judge?
The judges came to their movement stigmatized: they are all corrupt and privileged. The popular vote will purify them. In addition, their salaries will be reduced. An important group of career judges who were trained and took exams to be in the post will be replaced by another group that the people will elect after several committees select the candidates. What could go wrong?
There have been warnings from some INE counselors about how complicated the organization of the election will be. The Judicial Branch is divided into districts and circuits and there are many specializations. In the popular imagination, the Judicial Branch is the criminal system, but no, it is much broader. District judges and circuit magistrates will be elected in civil, mercantile, labor, administrative matters, etc., in addition to the ministers and magistrates of the Electoral Tribunal.
The requirements for new judges or magistrates are minimal, because they also started from the false premise that this profession is easy; any lawyer can become a judge. Letters of recommendation from neighbors, which caused laughter at Harvard, are part of the requirements.
The election will be complex due to the sheer number of judges that will be elected. What universe are we talking about? The exercise has already been done and the number of ballots that will be required and the list of names that will be on them would cause a person to take up to three hours to vote. Maybe it will be solved with a tín Marín, because it is going to be almost impossible for people to know the almost 1,600 candidates. As stated in Minister González Alcántara's project, if the radio and television time that INE has only for the judicial election campaign were distributed, each candidate would have 2.5 seconds daily, time that would be enough to pronounce his or her name, if the name is not too long, of course.
Despite all the difficulties and forecasts, the election is still underway, but that will not be the worst thing; the worst thing will be what system of administration of justice we are going to be left with. In the Court there will be a great setback in terms of the quality of the resolutions, especially if the scope of the amparo was narrowed with the reform and the importance of the norms and principles derived from international treaties was reformulated. The principles of Article I in the area of human rights will become a dead letter as a result of the misunderstood "constitutional supremacy". It should be remembered that, in order to avoid invalidating part of the first reform, a second one was made that will leave the new constitutional judges with their hands almost completely tied.
Bad times are coming for the administration of justice. Beyond the labor rights of judges and magistrates and the truncated judicial careers, the impact on citizens seeking justice will be enormous, but is not yet perceived.
In the meantime, people who, like me, have chosen to train as lawyers in the classroom, will continue our patient work so that there will be people ready for the process of reconstruction of the demolished building. How long will it take? It is not possible to know, but it will be many years. We will arm ourselves with patience to restart the task.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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