Invalidate or invalidate?
The academic of the UNAM Legal Research Institute, Hugo Concha, highlighted that the project of Minister Aguilar Morales, as it was drafted, “did pronounce itself to invalidate a part of constitutional article 19 that included the list of crimes that merited informal preventive detention, which most of the ministers -with different positions and arguments-, were not convinced”.
In addition, it caused it to be said that the Court would assume the role of “crossing out pieces” of the Constitution, especially because it does not explicitly have that power, despite having broad powers in matters of constitutional interpretation.
In that sense, the constitutionalist considered that the project was indeed complicated.
“I thought that at the time of the vote -which in the end did not take place-, they were going to do something like the issue of the Electricity Industry Law (LIE) of separating the issues and voting.”
According to Concha Cantú, the decision of Minister Luis María Aguilar to remake the project is a reasonable and plausible solution so that he can take up the important parts of the arguments made by his peers and with that, form a majority in the vote.
“It is very likely that the project, according to the arguments put forward by the ministers, including President Arturo Zaldívar, does not seek to disapply (article 19), which is what becomes complicated,” he noted.
However, “they will seek to give a different interpretation to the meaning of informal preventive detention so that it is the judge who evaluates each specific case and determines whether this figure is appropriate or not.”
The university academic considered that the elaboration of a new project represents a risk, because it is about presenting a new one and there is no date for that to happen.
“We hope that it will not be kept in a drawer indefinitely, although I do not think it will be so, because Minister Aguilar clearly expresses this idea that there was a majority in the sense of not accepting the informal preventive detention of the way in which it has been done, for being a violation of many rights”, he explained.
