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The election of judges by popular vote in Mexico never took place until this year of 2025. The new justices took office on September 1, 2025. The previous supreme court of Mexico consisted of eleven justices. The new Mexican supreme court (SCJN) consists of nine justices. Five of them are women. The new chief justice, Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, identifies as indigenous. He is a member of the Mixtec nation of Oaxaca. In the photo, he is seated in the first row, center. Under the new system, a supreme court justice will serve a twelve-year-term. Lower court judges will serve a six-year-term. All judicial candidates from the supreme court on down were and always will be, prohibited from accepting campaign PAC funds and individual campaign contributions. Mexican supreme court justices earn the same salary as the president of Mexico. The Mexican supreme court in recent decades has been considered the ‘cleanest’ branch of government in relation to not engaging acts of corruption. Unlike the U.S. supreme court, the Mexican supreme court in recent decades has been more transparent in the way of their proceedings being televised to the public live on a cable channel. Most of the new Mexican supreme justices consist of social liberals and progressives, and members of the ruling left-of-center MORENA party. The two major opposition parties, the centrist PRI and the right-wing PAN, which together are referred to by most other political parties as the PRIAN, were opposed to the election of judges by popular vote.