In 2021, President of the Supreme Court, Arturo Zaldívar Lelo de Lara hailed the latest judicial reforms as “the most important [reforms] in almost 30 years.”1 The Mexican judiciary began slowly reforming in 1994, with some major reforms for human rights pursued after 2011. Even so, critics expressed skepticism that Zaldívar’s 2021 reform package is truly all that it appears to be. If there is consensus on one thing, however, it is that Zaldívar’s reforms came at a pivotal moment in the nation’s history, with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s authoritarian tendencies soon to be tested through popular referendum.

While the 2021 reforms are indeed nowhere near as monumental as Zaldívar has promised them to be, his politicking did prevent other reforms from becoming law which would have threatened the independence and legitimacy of the judiciary. The reforms are thus notable more for what they prevented than for what they actually were. Nevertheless, the reforms did effectively centralize the power of the judiciary in the National Supreme Court (“SCJN”) while, apparently, professionalizing and expanding access to judicial positions through statutory requirements. Though the ultimate effect of these reforms cannot be known for some time, it appears, at least initially, that their impact on corruption and nepotism in the judiciary will remain minimal.