Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies

Since 2002, the Project on Reforming the Administration of Justice in Mexico has generated a thriving network of scholars and developed new important research on Mexico’s ailing criminal justice system. This project has brought together a multi-disciplinary coalition of well-respected scholars and experts from U.S. and Mexican institutions to analyze the single most important political policy challenge facing Mexico today: strengthening the rule of law. This project has been instrumental in promoting collaborative networks and in generating timely, useful analysis for public officials from the United States and Mexico. Through this project, the Center and the Senate’s Institute for Legislative Research co-hosted two multi-institutional briefings on justice reform legislation for the Mexican Senate. These briefings, held in January and March, provided legislators with a technical analysis of the set of major justice reform proposals presented by President Fox last year. In a first stage, the RAJM coordinated the work of an inter-disciplinary group of scholars, institutions and policy makers interested in the analysis and consolidation of justice reform in Mexico. A second forum gathered a multiparty contingent of high-ranking Mexican Senators and was televised on the public information channel of the Mexican Congress. Thanks to the remarkable consensus on the need for reform voiced by the project’s diverse set of academic institutions and professional associations, it is quite certain that this effort will have a major impact in shaping the legislative debate on justice reform in Mexico (the final report has been distributed to all Federal Deputies and also to all local legislatures).