Judicial Review and Rights Protection in Mexico: The Limits of the 2011 Amparo Reform

Abstract

The paper critically discusses the potential impact of the much-awaited 2011 Mexican constitutional reform on the amparo writ, in connection with other changes the Mexican constitutional system has recently undergone. It reaches pretty pessimistic conclusions, arguing that much more should have been done to put amparo in conditions to operate effectively in terms of rights protection. The paper includes a historic overview that describes the structure of the writ and identifies some of the causes behind its current procedural complexity. And it argues that, although the reform improves to some degree access conditions as well as the kind of remedies the amparo judge can adopt, the changes are shy, and they do not significantly diminish an utterly unacceptable degree of procedural complexity. Regulatory obscurity and the impossibility of reasonably foreseeing what the filing of an amparo will end up delivering in terms of rights protection will continue to set significant barriers and keep amparo away from ordinary citizens.

Keywords: amparo, Mexico, human rights reform, rights protection, path dependance, access to justice, procedural complexity