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 problem is that there is value in legal systems producing consistent results, especially when it comes to the kind of law both sides can spend millions on. Without consistency, the legal system backs up more than now as rulings are so wildly different that it makes sense to play the lottery with the courts. That causes cases to sit even longer and defense costs to raise higher for smaller participants.
And if the system doesn’t perform well for those less advantaged, courts aren’t the best place to defend making this systematic change. At best, it acts as a relief valve to pushing actionable political change.
And if the system doesn’t perform well for those less advantaged, courts aren’t the best place to defend making this systematic change. At best, it acts as a relief valve to pushing actionable political change.
Having a judge who won’t rule your relatively benign protest action to be “terrorism” seems like a good way of supporting systemic change.
But that requires the public voting. In Mexico, it also requires planning out judicial succession as the executive branch has term limits and I expect this would get propagated to the judiciary.
You need judicial succession anyway, given that people die, but we have plenty of examples of the intuition you express there not holding up. After all, there are no term limits for US congress people despite the strict term limits for the President.
Of course, I oppose term limits, I think they’re another guardrail for capital, since the capitalists don’t have a term limit on their wealth, which they can use to keep backing pliable puppets.
The problem is that there is value in legal systems producing consistent results, especially when it comes to the kind of law both sides can spend millions on. Without consistency, the legal system backs up more than now as rulings are so wildly different that it makes sense to play the lottery with the courts. That causes cases to sit even longer and defense costs to raise higher for smaller participants.
And if the system doesn’t perform well for those less advantaged, courts aren’t the best place to defend making this systematic change. At best, it acts as a relief valve to pushing actionable political change.
Having a judge who won’t rule your relatively benign protest action to be “terrorism” seems like a good way of supporting systemic change.
But that requires the public voting. In Mexico, it also requires planning out judicial succession as the executive branch has term limits and I expect this would get propagated to the judiciary.
You need judicial succession anyway, given that people die, but we have plenty of examples of the intuition you express there not holding up. After all, there are no term limits for US congress people despite the strict term limits for the President.
Of course, I oppose term limits, I think they’re another guardrail for capital, since the capitalists don’t have a term limit on their wealth, which they can use to keep backing pliable puppets.