At the end of 2022, the Supreme Court Justice of the Nation was accused of alleged plagiarism of her law degree thesis; it was said that she took the text from another student, Édgar Ulises Báez, who finished his studies a year before her, in 1986.
The investigation was made public when the Court was undergoing a succession process following the vacancy of Justice Arturo Zaldívar, who was leaving the presidency of the High Court at the end of his term.
In addition to Esquivel, the following ministers raised their hands: Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena, Javier Laynez Potisek, Alberto Pérez Dayán and Norma Lucía Piña Hernández, the latter being the first woman to be elected president of the Court.
In February of this year, an Administrative Court judge granted a provisional suspension to the minister against the integration, formation and registration of the UNAM Ethics Committee, which was investigating the authorship of the undergraduate thesis written 37 years ago at the former National School of Higher Studies Aragón (ENEP-Aragón), now the Faculty of Higher Studies (FES-Aragón).
After investigating the case, the FES Aragón ruled that Yasmín Esquivel’s thesis was a “substantial copy” of the one submitted by her colleague, facts that the minister denied and assured that she “had nothing to be ashamed of.”
UNAM then asked Mexico’s Ministry of Public Education (SEP) to decide whether or not to revoke his academic degree, something the Mexican government refused to do.
The then rector of UNAM, Enrique Graue, said that current regulations did not allow the university to revoke the minister’s degree.
Later, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who proposed Esquivel in 2019 to be part of the Court, urged the rector to file a complaint so that the Judiciary could decide on the case.
It was on April 19, 2023, when Rector Graue reported that the UNAM Ethics Committee had concluded its studies on the alleged plagiarism case and was ready to issue a ruling.
However, a few days later, on April 22, a civil judge in Mexico City ordered the university to refrain from continuing with the university process in the minister’s case.
Almost two months later, on June 8, the minister’s lawyers also reported that a judge in Mexico City had determined, in a “firm and unassailable” manner, that the lawyer was the sole author of her undergraduate thesis presented at UNAM to obtain a degree in Law.
The minister’s legal team explained that, with this resolution, the process before the UNAM Ethics Committee should be left without subject matter and, therefore, its work should be concluded.
