In brief
An initiative to amend article 17 of the Mexican Constitution, was presented in the senate on September 02, 2020, this initiative intends to add a paragraph on to regulate virtual justice with the use of information technologies, including the adoption of electronic signatures.
The purposes of this constitutional reform are the following:
- The obligation of all powers and jurisdictional authorities at both, local and federal levels, to progressively implement an online justice system.
- Establishment of virtual courts, through information and communication technologies.
- Set the basis to allow commencement and completion of all judicial proceedings electronically.
- The regulation for the creation of the judicial electronic records, after validating the electronic signature.
- Implementation of online trials will be optative for the parties, as in Mexico it is necessary to improve the internet accessibility for a large part of the population.
Contents
Key takeaways:
The paragraph that is intended to be added, establishes the following:
To help guaranteeing access to justice in an agile and timely manner, the Federal and the State’s Judiciary, Federal Court of Administrative Justice, Agrarian Courts, Electoral Courts, and the Federal and State’s Administrative Courts will progressively implement the online justice system, through the use of information and communication technologies in order to allow commencement and completion of the trials and all of their instances, virtually, under the terms set forth in the law.
Once the initiative was filed, it was handed over to the United Commissions of Constitutional Points and Legislative Studies, which are pending to issue their opinion.
According to the explanatory memorandum, the objective of this reform is to have a legal framework that guarantees access to virtual justice as in a face-to-face manner, as well as to guarantee the access to health and employment to all governed and public servers.
