Azul A. Aguiar Aguilar. “Backlash Against the Courts: The Path Toward Authoritarianism in Mexico.” Law & Policy 48, no. 3 (2026): e70014. https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.70014

This article examines how leaders with autocratic tendencies capture the judiciary in order to concentrate power legally, using Mexico under Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018–2024) as its central case. Aguiar Aguilar argues that judicial takeover proceeds through two complementary strategies: rhetorical attacks that erode the already fragile public legitimacy of courts, and institutional or legal attacks (budget cuts, forced removals, constitutional reform) that dismantle judicial independence and remove the judiciary as a veto player. Drawing on two original web-scraped databases covering 1,646 presidential morning press conferences, plenary sessions of both legislative chambers, and 137 judicial reform initiatives, the analysis traces how attacks escalated after MORENA lost its supermajority in 2021 and the Supreme Court struck down signature electoral, energy, and security reforms. The 2024 judicial reform that followed introduced the popular election of judges, forced the resignation of eight of eleven Supreme Court justices, and purged more than 1,700 federal judges. The chapter situates these dynamics within debates on democratic erosion, abusive constitutionalism, and autocratic legalism, arguing that delegitimizing rhetoric is especially corrosive in third-wave democracies with low judicial trust because it is harder for opposition and civil society to identify as a threat, and that the legal capture of courts constitutes a distinct path from democracy toward competitive authoritarianism.