Law & Democracy Network: Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: The Mexican Judicial Overhaul and Comparative Perspectives
Mariana Velasco-Rivera (Assistant Professor in Law, School of Law and Criminology, Maynooth University, Ireland)
Julio Ríos-Figueroa (Associate Professor, Department of Law, Autonomous Institute of Technology of Mexico, Mexico)
Notes & Changes
This is a fully online event. Please register through the link provided above for attendance.
About the event
The Law and Democracy Network is pleased to host a panel discussion on unconstitutional constitutional amendments and the Mexican judicial overhaul. With perspectives from political science, Mexican constitutional law, and comparative constitutionalism, the panel will explore the legal and democratic implications of constitutional amendments that may undermine core constitutional principles.
Background
On 15 September 2024, Mexico enacted a series of constitutional amendments that fundamentally restructured its judiciary. Essentially, the reform (1) removes all sitting judges from office, (2) replaces them with new ones elected by popular vote, and 3) establishes a popularly elected Disciplinary Court for judicial oversight and accountability. Critics contend that the constitutional amendments did not follow the prescribed procedures (article 135 of the Mexican Constitution) and undermined judicial independence and democracy.
On 8 October 2024, the Mexican Supreme Court agreed to review the constitutionality of the judicial reform. This decision reopens the broader debate on unconstitutional constitutional amendments and who should have the final say in determining the validity of an amendment – whether it is the judiciary, the people, or political institutions. Different jurisdictions have developed various doctrines to deal with unconstitutional constitutional amendments, such as the ‘substitution of the constitution doctrine’ in Colombia, the ‘basic structure doctrine’ in India, and the ‘identity of the Constitution’ in Germany. At the heart of the matter is the protection of constitutional democracy, especially against authoritarian backsliding.
About the panellists
Julio Ríos-Figueroa is Associate Professor at the Department of Law at ITAM in Mexico City, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Neukom Center for the Rule of Law at Stanford University School of Law. Ríos-Figueroa received his Ph.D. in Politics from New York University (NYU). His research focuses on comparative judicial politics,the rule of law, and empirical legal studies with an empirical focus on the Latin American region. Ríos-Figueroa is the author of Constitutional Courts as Mediators. Armed Conflict, Civil-Military Relations, and the Rule of Law in Latin America as well as co-editor with Gretchen Helmke of the volume Courts in Latin Americaboth published by Cambridge University Press. He has also published several articles that are available at https://rios-figueroa.com/ Professor Ríos-Figueroa has been also a Fellow at the Wilson Center (2022-3), a Hauser Research Scholar at the NYU School of Law (2006-7), Visiting Professor at the Juan March Institute in Madrid (2012-13), and Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at Stanford´s CASBS (2017-2018). Ríos-Figueroa was the editor of Política y gobierno (2014-2018)."
Mariana Velasco-Rivera is an Assistant Professor in Law at the National University of Ireland Maynooth (Maynooth University), co-editor of the International Association of Constitutional Law Blog (IACL Blog) and a nonresident scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy (Center for the United States and Mexico). Before joining Maynooth University, Mariana was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Chair of Comparative Constitutionalism held by Professor Ran Hirschl at the University of Göttingen, Germany (2019-2021) and an Emile Noël Fellow at NYU School of Law (2020-2021). Mariana received her doctoral degree (Doctor of Juridical Science—JSD) and her master’s degree (LLM) from Yale Law School. She also holds an LLB from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). In 2016-2017 she was a Yale Fox International Fellow and a visiting researcher at the Center for Global Constitutionalism at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
Before her graduate studies, Mariana clerked for judge José Ramón Cossío Díaz at the Supreme Court of Mexico (2010-2014). Mariana’s research interests are in the field of public law, specifically, constitutional law, comparative constitutional law and constitutional theory. In her research, she explores the relationship between constitutionalism, constitutional design and democracy and how political norms and practices shape legal institutions.
Nicola Tommasini is reading for a Dphil at the University of Oxford, Exeter College. He holds the following degrees: LLM, Yale Law School (2020); MPhil, University of São Paulo (2018); BA, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (2017). Nicola is also an Associate Researcher at Fundação Getúlio Vargas-SP and has held multiple scholarships in Brazil. His main fields of interest are comparative constitutional law, constitutional change, institutional design and democratic theory.
Currently, Nicola is invested in the research of legislative obligations and their enforcement. Under the supervision of Professor Nicholas Barber, his thesis investigates how constitutions establish obligations towards the legislature and what courts may do and have done when legislatures fail to fulfill these constitutional obligations. Nicola is also engaged in the study of unconstitutional constitutional amendments. He is currently putting together a database that gathers all constitutional review decisions of constitutional amendments in the world in an attempt to better understand unconstitutional constitutional amendments from a quantitative perspective.
Luz Orozco-y-Villa is a Dphil candidate at the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford and a nonresident scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy (Center for the United States and Mexico). Her research focuses on the intersection of constitutional law and emerging technologies, specifically the constitutionalisation of digital platforms and online content moderation. She is a research assistant at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and a teaching assistant at the Oxford Internet Institute.
Before joining Oxford, Luz served as a career clerk for the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice and as a research advisor at the Gender Equality Program of the Federal Judicial Council. She earned an LLM from Columbia Law School as a Fulbright grantee and Bretzfelder scholar, and holds an LLB from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). Her master and doctoral studies have been funded by the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology.