WORLD NEWS | Mexico’s Supreme Court elects first female chief justice

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 3 (AP) — Mexico’s Supreme Court on Monday elected its first female chief justice in history.

Judge Norma Lucía Piña was sworn in as president of the 11-member court for a four-year term, pledging to uphold the independence of the country’s highest court.

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“Independence of the judiciary is integral to resolving conflicts between branches of government,” Piena said Monday as she laid out her plan. “My main advice is to try to build a majority, putting aside my personal vision.”

As chief justice, Peena will also lead the entire judiciary. She is not considered an ally of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and opposition parties welcomed her election.

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Despite pressure from López Obrador on the ministers, her fellow ministers passed the vote in a 6-5 vote on Monday.

López Obrador had backed another female judge, Yasmine Esquivel, for the top job. But it has recently been suggested that Judge Esquivel may have plagiarized an academic paper to earn his bachelor’s degree in the late ’80s.

The public university where she earned the degree is still working on the case; her thesis, submitted in 1987, is the same one she submitted a year earlier. Esquivel claims that earlier papers plagiarized her later work.

The president has pushed a number of controversial laws through Congress, only to see them blocked by the courts, and getting an ally elected as chief justice was seen as key for López Obrador.

On Monday, he claimed that “the judiciary has been hijacked … overshadowed by money and economic power.”

However, Sen. López Obrador’s former interior secretary, Olga Cordero, welcomed Piña’s election.

“This is the time of human rights, the time of women,” Cordero wrote on her social media accounts. (Associated Press)

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