ABSTRACT
The hegemonic party regime that characterized Mexico for most of the 20th century led to a protracted transition to democracy driven by a series of political reforms that combined with a series of socioeconomic changes. The gradual melting down of an authoritarian regime has shaped the institutional architecture of the justice system, which after more than a decade of democratic governance still exhibits traits from the authoritarian past. In particular, the Mexican justice system has a pyramidal architecture in which the president of the Republic and the Supreme Court exert considerable influence over the functioning of the whole justice system: the former through its control of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministerio Público) and the latter through its control of the administration of the judiciary and its concentrated power of constitutional review.
