Minister Dayán is replaced in controversy over judicial reform
Mexico City.– The Supreme Court of Justice handed over to Minister Alberto Pérez Dayán the controversy in which it will determine whether he can review the judicial reform and, where appropriate, qualify it or annul it.
Pérez Dayán does not have a deadline to present a project on the controversy that the Court opened last Thursday based on article 11, section XVII, of the Organic Law of the Federal Judicial Power (PJF), which empowers it to resolve conflicts within of the PJF and ensure its autonomy and independence.
The minister, nominated in 2012 by former President Enrique Peña Nieto, is one of the four from a federal judicial career who still remain on the Court. The Constitutional reform, in force since September 16, mandates the election by popular vote of all judges in the country, including, in June 2025, all positions in the Court, a new Court of Judicial Discipline, 17 positions in the Court Electoral of the PJF and half of the more than 1,600 federal judges and magistrates.
The controversy over Article 11 is not regulated, so there are multiple unknowns about the steps that Pérez Dayán will follow, who, for example, could supplementarily apply the rules for ordinary constitutional controversies.
This would imply summoning the federal Congress and Executive, as well as the state legislatures, to submit reports and argue in favor of the reform and against the possibility of the Court reviewing it. It is also not clear whether, at the request of the judges and magistrates who promoted these consultations, Pérez Dayán could grant a suspension to stop the implementation of the reform, an issue that the Plenary declined to clarify today, by discarding several files where that particular point was raised. . It remains to be seen whether Pérez Dayán would present a project with substantive arguments about the reform, or only about the power of the Court to review it or not given that it involves changes to the Constitution or if he will encompass all the issues in a single project to expedite the discussion. Apparently, six votes would be enough for any Plenary ruling, despite it being a Constitutional reform, precisely because this controversy is not regulated. The Court could simply clarify that it cannot make any pronouncement on a reform of the Magna Carta, but that does not seem to be the position taken by the majority of ministers, who have shown their rejection of the election by popular vote.
