Mexico to Style Legal System After US
MEXICO WILL BREAK with much of its long-standing legal traditions, instead to institute a process that emulates US law in many positive ways.
IT LOOKS LIKE Mexican law is about to undergo a huge shift.
In what experts say is nothing short of a revolution, Mexico is gradually abandoning its centuries-old Napoleonic system of closed-door, written inquisitions — largely a legacy of Spanish colonial rule — that had long been criticized as rife with corruption, opaque decisions, abuse of defendants and red tape that bogged down cases for years.
In the US, the idea is that we are innocent until proven guilty. Of course many of us are aware it doesn’t exactly always work this way , especially with the way more and more police use Tasers to lash back against anything that so much as bruises their own self-esteem (Amnesty International lists 351 deaths this year from use of the “non-lethal” weapons the majority of which are fired before a trial can determine one’s guilt!) But for the most part, this is how it is supposed to work. Not so in Mexico. Though the idea is this is going to change. Plea bargains, probation, trials open to the public, and greater use of forensics will now become a part of the legal process.
I can only imagine this is a very positive step, and a long time coming. While Spain and her language and architecture y la sangre still runs strong and always will, through the veins of Mexico and much of her children, I think we can all do without Inquisition-flavored behavior (ahem).
Tags: Law, Spanish Inquisition
Posted in Criminal Justice System, History, Mexican Politics, Mexico, Police, Politics
This does not change the Napoleonic Code (Civil Code… Roman Law), which gets into how rights and obligations are defined within over-lapping groups (anything from your family to the human race) but courtroom procedure. The changes don’t undo the basics of the law (which took a lot of Venn diagrams and a very patient Dutch attorney to explain to me) but just how court cases are heard.
Napoleon never said trials had to be held informally and based on written statements, but that’s the way they were in most of Latin America. France — which is where Napoleonic Code comes from, after all — always did have open trials and public pleadings. While U.S. lawyers are the obvious trainers for preparing Mexican attorneys for public trials, the reforms are based on Italian and Chilean court procedure, not the U.S. legal system, which has a very different legal system, based on a very different legal theory.
Interesting. Thanks for the nuance, Richard. I actually wondered how literal that word was used. I see now my suspicions were on target….