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07/09/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 07/09/2025 15:35

No Checks on Power? The Effects of Mexico’s Judicial Reform on Foreign Investment and the USMCA

No Checks on Power? The Effects of Mexico's Judicial Reform on Foreign Investment and the USMCA

Photo: JULIO CESAR AGUILAR/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary by Ryan C. Berg and Natalia Hidalgo

Published July 9, 2025

On September 11, 2024, Mexico's senate approved a sweeping constitutional reform meant to fundamentally reshape the country's judicial system, principally by having all judges in the country be popularly elected to their positions. Its architect, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), had spent his six-year term railing against the Mexican judiciary, asserting that the rot of corruption, nepotism, and abuse of power had spread to judges at all levels-federal, state, and local. Echoing this narrative, the judicial reform, introduced on February 5, 2023, as part of AMLO's signature reform package, was presented as necessary to eradicate corruption, restore democratic legitimacy by "democratizing" the judiciary, and finally, guarantee impartial justice for all.

The genesis of the reform is AMLO's clashes with the judicial branch. Frustrated by the Supreme Court repeatedly striking down important aspects of his legislative agenda, AMLO came to believe that the Fourth Transformation, his ambitious project to end the "neoliberal era" in Mexico, would require far-reaching constitutional changes to be truly consolidated. During a recent CSIS Americas Program event on the immediate and long-term effects of the reform, panelists and legal experts noted that the constitutional amendment was a key piece in a larger political chessboard aimed at transforming Mexico into a more consolidated state under one-party rule, with potentially disastrous consequences for Mexico's legal and economic future.

In June 2024, a landslide victory, boosted by allies and dealmaking with opposition figures, allowed Morena to secure the two-thirds majority in Congress that had eluded AMLO for years. Dominance of the legislature allowed him to amend the constitution. At the reform's heart is an overhaul of the appointment-based system; within three years, all sitting judges-including those on the Supreme Court, circuit court magistrates, and federal district judges-will be dismissed and replaced through popular vote. Amid significant controversy and even greater uncertainty, the first round of votes took place on June 1, 2025, with Mexicans selecting almost 2,700 judges from a list of over 7,000 candidates. A second vote to elect 4,000 judges is scheduled for 2027. With this reform, Mexico became the only country in the world to elect its entire judiciary via universal suffrage.

Since its inception, the judicial reform has been plagued by uncertainty that has only increased over time. Critics decried it as a constitutional tragedy; supporters praised it as the democratization of justice.

Former President Ernesto Zedillo claimed that the changes would "destroy the judicial branch and, with it, bury Mexican democracy and what remains of its fragile rule of law." In contrast, President Claudia Sheinbaum, AMLO's protégée, has staunchly defended the reform since taking office in October 2024, declaring it proof that Mexico is now "the most democratic country in the world."

Morena's candidates triumphed in the low turnout affair, finding themselves in de facto control of the three branches of government. This panorama is likely to undermine investor confidence, the business environment, and even the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) review process. With a more politicized and captured judiciary, Mexico's legal environment has become even more uncertain, a bad omen for foreign investment, corporate confidence, and the future of North American economic integration. Indeed, over time, Mexico may begin to exhibit some of the hallmarks of judicial uncertainty, arbitrariness, and even the predatory state behavior of more authoritarian one-party governments. Both the United States and Canada have expressed concerns and criticism over the reform, including the discordance with Mexico's international obligations under the USMCA, particularly provisions requiring independent justice and labor courts.

An Uneven Process Leads to Morena Dominance

The Obrador-Sheinbaum judicial reform represents the most significant change to the judiciary in Mexico's history. Its reach is far greater than the reforms undertaken under the U.S.-funded Mérida Initiative, aimed at reducing impunity. Beyond the direct election of judges, it fundamentally alters the structure of the judiciary and how judges perform their duties by:

  • Reducing the eligibility criteria for candidates, eliminating prior experience in the judicial system, and only requiring a grade point average of 8 (out of 10) in undergraduate or graduate law studies, five letters of recommendation, and an essay to stand for election.
  • Reducing the number of Supreme Court Justices from 11 to 9 and eliminating subject-specific chambers.
  • Establishing a new Judicial Discipline Tribunal, composed of five members, tasked with supervising, reviewing, and sanctioning the judges' decisions.
  • Introducing "faceless" courts to protect judges' identities when handling organized crime-related cases-repeatedly declared in contravention of several international treaties.

Beset with confusion from the outset, the implementation phase of the reform sowed even greater chaos. Although a small number of Mexican citizens did cast votes, the process was not genuinely representative, and the candidate pool on the ballot was neither freely nor broadly determined. Evaluation committees, appointed by the three branches of government, of which Morena controlled both the executive and legislative, were tasked with reviewing and selecting nominees, leading to three separate sets of standards for evaluating the same positions. Official candidates had to be chosen from a pool of nearly 50,000 registered applicants, an almost unmanageable task given the condensed timeline for the election. Consequently, the selection process was shaped by partisan meddling and behind-the-scenes negotiations. Despite constitutional bans on public or private campaign funding for judicial elections, some candidates may have relied on illicit financing to gain visibility in the media. Professionalism took a back seat to popularity and party loyalty as the deciding criteria for winning candidates, enabling, in some cases, the nomination of individuals with criminal pasts and ties to organized crime.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this process led to historic levels of abstention and documented irregularities on election day. President Sheinbaum's praise of the vote as a "complete success" stood in stark contrast with the paltry 13 percent voter turnout, the lowest recorded participation rate since Mexico became a multiparty democracy in the late 1990s, and one of the lowest in Latin America. Spoiled and unmarked ballots accounted for 23 percent of the already abysmal turnout. Although the elections were meant to be nonpartisan in nature, electoral observers documented the prevalence of cheat sheets-partisan guides instructing voters exactly which boxes to tick for the party's candidates-with Morena being the main offender. Some versions-modeled after communion wafers-were designed to be eaten before observers could see them in a bid to eliminate the evidence of rule-breaking. With an overwhelming pool of candidates and no clear guidelines, not only on how to vote but on the qualities that make a good judge, cheat sheets became a necessity for struggling voters trying to interpret the process.

The results proved a massive boon for the ruling Morena party. Although it took several weeks to announce the results, further complicating their legitimacy in the eyes of voters, the winners were almost uniformly those featured in Morena's widely distributed cheat sheets. For instance, six of the nine candidates elected to the Supreme Court were nominated by the ruling party, while the remaining three were justices appointed by AMLO and won their elections. Silvia Delgado, former lawyer for the notorious drug trafficker Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, was elected as a judge in Ciudad Juárez's criminal court. Rather than resolve cases based on the impartial application of the law, the newly elected judges will likely weigh voter sentiment, partisan political agendas, and even private interests when making their rulings.

Effects on the Courts and the Business Community

In August 2024, amid mounting legal uncertainty, Morgan Stanley downgraded Mexico to underweight status, citing heightened risk and a negative investment outlook. Ten months later, the same level of uncertainty persists. The prospect of a politicized judiciary with less expertise in commercial matters has rattled investors and fueled a crisis of confidence in the ability of Mexico's legal system to protect investment, undermining its standing as a reliable international partner and a secure investment destination. Unpredictable courts are likely to increase the risk for domestic and foreign companies doing business in Mexico and deter current and future investment in the key manufacturing linchpin of the North American bloc. Business concerns can be categorized into three broad buckets:

  1. Backlog of case resolution: One of the immediate consequences of the reform is the growing backlog of case resolution. Work stoppages in protest of the judicial overhaul, coupled with the steep learning curve of newly appointed judges as they familiarize themselves with ongoing cases, are already slowing down the pace of judicial proceedings. The elimination of the Supreme Court's subject-specific chambers means that all matters must now be decided by the full bench, compounding further delays and affecting the efficiency of the judiciary. Strategic sectors such as energy, infrastructure, and telecommunications-which depend on swift and predictable decisions to stay competitive-are and will be particularly vulnerable to these types of disruptions.
  2. Predatory state behavior: A judiciary filled mostly with Morena loyalists risks empowering the government to act in a predatory manner toward the private sector, including through actions that amount to de facto expropriation. This has already occurred under Morena in critical sectors such as the mining industry. As the Sheinbaum administration desperately strives to close a fiscal deficit of 5.7 percent of GDP, it may increasingly turn to aggressive litigation against national-and more likely international-businesses to generate revenue, control assets it finds strategic, or move national champions into dominant positions in certain industries to the detriment of competition and quality. This could favor state-owned companies over privately owned entities and make it significantly harder for international companies and investors to navigate Mexico's shifting legal environment and anticipate how courts will handle state overreach. Legal uncertainty could continue to deepen, especially in industries vulnerable to regulatory abuse. Additionally, contract enforcement may depend on newly elected judges with little commercial experience. Companies may feel profoundly insecure, knowing that their assets could be seized or transferred to politically favored actors under a legal veneer. According to legal experts, winning a case against state-controlled courts could become nearly impossible, placing domestic private, and especially foreign firms, at a significant disadvantage.
  3. Criminal penetration: In a country where criminal organizations have long sought and won influence with the economic and political elite, exposing the judiciary to the electoral process offers these criminal groups a direct opportunity to exercise control by nominating, financing, or manipulating judicial candidates to serve their interests. Infiltrating the judiciary would enable malicious actors to secure favorable rulings, obstruct investigations, and deepen impunity-further eroding the rule of law. This potential deepening of institutional corruption raises a serious red flag for investors and firms, particularly given that many multinational companies operate in areas of the country heavily influenced by criminal groups. This risk is not theoretical; recently, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's FinCEN sanctioned three major Mexican financial institutions for allegedly laundering money on behalf of Mexican criminal organizations and facilitating the purchase of fentanyl precursors from China. Among them is the brokerage firm Vector Casa de Bolsa, owned by Alfonso Romo, a Morena party member and former chief of staff to AMLO. Vector, one of the largest fund management companies in Latin America, is accused of money laundering for the Sinaloa Cartel. The fact that one of the sanctioned institutions has ties to Morena's inner circle only deepens concerns that judicial elections could open yet another door to criminal influence and institutional corruption.

To Stay or to Go

In response to the changing legal environment, many private firms are already exploring strategies to manage and mitigate these rapidly emerging risks. Broadly, both domestic and foreign businesses face three options:

  1. Stay. Many firms are committed to the North American bloc and may accept the heightened risk of doing business in Mexico's unpredictable environment. Companies could opt to remain but with a reduced presence, limiting their exposure. International companies may restructure current or future investments through legal entities that allow them to benefit from the protections offered by the more than 30 bilateral investment treaties and multilateral treaties Mexico has signed. While these treaties may offer a modicum of protection, firms that choose to remain will seek to avoid Mexico's court system at all costs. Concomitantly, they may seek to cloak themselves in the protections of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions under international treaties, particularly the USMCA, possibly pushing for expanded protections in the USMCA revision and allowing them to bypass Mexican courts entirely. Yet even an arbitration ruling must return to Mexican courts for final approval and enforcement, bringing the dispute full circle and potentially reducing the utility of ISDS provisions.
  2. Stay, but seek powerful and connected allies. Exit may not be an option or even preferred; however, to mitigate risk, firms may seek to deal with the absence of judicial certainty by spending on top lobbying firms and building closer ties with Morena's political class to resolve disputes informally outside of judicial channels. In this context, Mexican firms will make use of their advantage and existing political ties with the government, placing foreign firms at a disadvantage. Such a phenomenon would likely prove catastrophic to Mexico's already stratospheric levels of corruption, privilege-connected companies, and large firms with deep pockets and serve as a boon to politicians turned lobbyists. If this scenario unfolds, the AMLO-Sheinbaum judicial reform, vaunted for its supposed salutary effects on combating corruption, will be hoisted by its own petard.
  3. Exit. Confronted with a breakdown in judicial certainty, companies and potential investors could pass on Mexico as a destination for investment. Some firms have already chosen to exit Mexico altogether. What is more likely, however, is that Mexico will experience significant opportunity costs, especially from potential greenfield investors. As of September 2024, foreign firms were reportedly withholding around $35 billion in investment projects. According to Oxford Analytica, foreign investment dropped to $644.9 million in the first quarter of 2024-lower than that recorded in the second quarter of 2020, when the world was reeling from the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the second quarter of 2024, new foreign investment fell to less than 10 percent of overall investment. For foreign investors, stability and the rule of law are not luxuries-they are prerequisites, without which even Mexico's considerable strategic advantages cannot outweigh the risks.

What the Future Holds

Judicial reform has cast doubt on the reliability of the national court system for legal certainty, triggering a period of waiting and reassessment. Firms of all sizes, whether Mexican or foreign, should not assume that the legal landscape will operate as it once did. Mexico has plunged into uncharted waters at a highly uncertain geopolitical moment, and risks losing its edge as an attractive foreign direct investment destination. Neighboring Central American countries, namely Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Panama, along with the Dominican Republic, have become attractive alternative destinations for U.S. companies seeking greater supply chain security. In this high-stakes global competition, legal uncertainty risks diminishing Mexico and jeopardizing its economy and its role as a key player in the North American project.

Ryan C. Berg is director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Natalia Hidalgo is an intern with the Americas Program at CSIS.

Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

© 2025 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.

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Americas
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Ryan C. Berg

Director, Americas Program

Natalia Hidalgo

Intern, Americas Program

Programs & Projects

  • Americas Program
  • Geopolitics and Foreign Policy
  • The USMCA Strategic Initiative: Understanding the Future of North American Trade

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