STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Mexico is in the middle of a fight over its constitution. The legislative and executive branch are about to pass a popular constitutional reform that would remake the judiciary - the judges. Judges and civil servants are fighting back with street protests and by blocking access to Congress. At the center of this fight is a big question - what if, in a democracy, the majority is wrong? NPR's Eyder Peralta reports.
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EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Tens of thousands of law students and judicial workers take to the streets of Mexico City.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #1: (Chanting in Spanish).
PERALTA: "The judiciary will not fall," they chant.
On signs, they write, the judiciary is not a political pawn.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #2: (Chanting in Spanish).
PERALTA: Over the past year, the outgoing president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, sold the Mexican people on remaking the federal judiciary. They're corrupt, he said, so let's fix it with democracy. He proposed federal judges be elected instead of appointed. And when elections came around this June, the Mexican people handed him the supermajority needed to amend the constitution. At the protest, law students argue that reform would end judicial independence.
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UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "There is no reason," one student shouts, "the majority should have its way."
MONICA CASTILLEJOS-ARAGON: That is in the spirit of the constitution.
PERALTA: That is Monica Castillejos-Aragon, who worked as a clerk in Mexico's Supreme Court. She says modern Mexican democracy never intended for the judiciary to be elected. In fact, Mexico used to elect its judges until the framers of the current constitution, which was passed in 1917, changed it. Elected judges led to corruption, so they reasoned that, unlike the other two branches of government, the judiciary should be above politics.
ARAGON: The framers expressed the need to establish an independent judicial power with security of tenure.
PERALTA: Castillejos, who now teaches comparative law at UC Berkeley, says, as Mexico started democratizing in the '90s, the country also began appointing judges the way the U.S. does. And in the early 2000s, nearly 80 years after it became independent on paper, the court finally began issuing landmark opinions.
ARAGON: For the very first time in history, the Mexican judges were able to interpret and expand the scope of the rights already recognized in the Mexican constitution.
PERALTA: In the last few years, the court went further, striking down key policies of the president. This reform, says Castillejos, puts in danger all that hard-fought independence. Constitutional lawyer Juan Carlos Gonzalez Cancino disagrees.
JUAN CARLOS GONZALEZ CANCINO: (Through interpreter) This reform gives me hope.
PERALTA: Gonzalez says the federal judiciary is corrupt. Big tax cases or business cases, he says, get decided with a phone call or a bag of money. In his mind, this is not about democracy. Instead, it's factions of the Mexican elite fighting for power and the money that power begets.
GONZALEZ CANCINO: (Through interpreter) But that ends because this reform destroys that power structure.
PERALTA: In fact, he says, instead of protesting, the judiciary should be celebrating the part of the constitution that gives a supermajority of Mexicans the right to change even the most cherished tenets of their Magna Carta.
GONZALEZ CANCINO: (Through interpreter) The function of the judiciary should be to defend the popular will, as manifested by the constitution.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Viva Mexico.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #3: Viva.
PERALTA: In the crowd at the protest, I spot Lorenzo Cordova, who led Mexico's electoral commission for nearly a decade. This is odd, I tell him. Everyone here says they're defending democracy, but they do so by saying Congress should ignore the vote of most Mexicans.
LORENZO CORDOVA: Obviously, in a democracy, the majority has the right to rule, but they hasn't the right to decide anything. That's a lesson that comes from 150 years ago, from Tocqueville.
PERALTA: Reflecting on American democracy, French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville warned of the tyranny of the majority, where decisions could be justified by numbers and not, quote, "by rightness or excellence."
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UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: The students tell everyone to head to the Senate.
"Look at this crowd," says Cordova.
CORDOVA: Our democracy is alive despite the majority.
PERALTA: Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Mexico City. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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