Reforma, Mexico City, January 2, 2023
By Victor Fuentes
Minister [Justice] Norma Piña Hernández today became the first woman to preside over the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation and the Federal Judicial Council [which oversees the entire federal court system], until the end of 2026.
...The voting of the ministers was a nail-biter. In the first round, Piña had three votes, with two for each of the other four candidates, who could vote for themselves, forcing everyone to participate in the second round.
Javier Laynez, with two votes, as well as Alberto Pérez Dayán and Yasmín Esquivel, each with only one, were eliminated in the second round, opening the way to the final round between Piña and Minister Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena.
MV Note: Yasmín Esquivel was nominated to the Court by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO, who made clear she was his favorite for the presidency. She is now under a shadow for evidently having plagiarized her thesis for her law degree.
The election was not decided until the last vote was cast when Minister Jorge Pardo announced his vote for Piña.
...(T)he career judge and magistrate, with 34 years of work in the Federal Judiciary, thus prevailed over four other candidates. In the final round, she obtained six votes, against five for Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena.
This is a historic election, not only because of the gender issue, but because it returns the presidency of the Court to a career judge after the four-year period during which Arturo Zaldívar was the first "external" member [a lawyer who had never been a judge] to head the Court.
Alluding to the lack of clarity about the possible winner, even in the last minutes, in her initial statement, Piña said,
"Uncertainty is a presupposition for freedom...I recognize the very important decision of the full Court to break what seemed like an inaccessible glass ceiling. I feel very strong because I feel that [all women] are here; we have placed ourselves for the first time in the central position of this Court, demonstrating to others and...to ourselves that 'yes, we can.'"
MV Note: The grito or shout, "¡Sí, se puede!", "Yes, it can be done!" is a central one in Mexican protest demonstrations.
Piña has been one of the Ministers most critical of the policies and reforms of the current Government [of AMLO]. An analysis done by Reforma of 18 votes of the Plenary [Full] Court between 2019 and 2022 in matters relevant to the current administration found that Piña voted against the administration's interests in 83 percent of those matters, surpassed only by Luis María Aguilar, a former president who swore in his colleague today.
MV Note: The Mexican Supreme Court is composed of eleven ministers (justices) divided into two "chambers" of five ministers each. The First Chamber hears appeals of criminal and civil cases. The Second Chamber hears government administration and labor cases. The president, who serves a four year term, does not participate in either chamber. The "Plenary" or full Court of eleven ministers hears cases that a chamber is unable to resolve or to make a final determination regarding the constitutionality of a law.
Opposition leaders and legislators, businessmen, members of government advisory councils, and electoral judges unanimously welcomed the Court's decision and agreed that, with its decision, the Ministers had exercised their judicial autonomy. In their opinion, it is a sign of the Court's independence in the face of much criticism by President López Obrador of the body [for not agreeing with him regarding a number of his executive orders that have come before the Court in regard to their constitutionality].
"The independence of the Federal Judiciary will be very important for the preservation of constitutional order and for the future of our democracy," said Lorenzo Córdova, president of the INE [National Electoral Institute, under a major legislative attack by AMLO to cut its size and powers significantly].
Marko Cortés, the president of PAN [National Action Party, the leading party in the "Opposition" in the Congress to the majority held by AMLO's Morena, Movement for National Regeneration], also praised the appointment.
The Mexican Business Council and the Business Coordinating Council [representing Mexican business interests nationally] also joined in the celebration.
MV Note: AMLO has been consistently critical of "neoliberal", capitalist business interests in investments and profits as being counter to his declared populist agenda, which he calls The Fourth Transformation of Mexico. Popularly abbreviated as "The 4T", he maintains that his administration, with its proclaimed revolutionary, populist goals, is equal in significance to the War for Independence from Spain, 1810-1821, the Reform Period of the presidency of Benito Juárez, 1860s-70s, and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1917.
Piña Hernández was nominated to the Court at the end of 2015 by then President Enrique Peña Nieto, and she is the last career judge to come to the Court as the four appointed by AMLO have been "external" lawyers...Last November, she surprised her colleagues, breaking with the tradition of discretion in these contests by announcing her candidacy in an interview in the newspaper, El País.