The Integrated Transportation System of the Aburra Valley (SIT-VA, from its original name in Spanish) regularly receives reports of animal injuries, mutilations and deaths. The Legal Clinic (LC) at Universidad Catolica Luis Amigo in Medellin set in motion a clinical exercise between March 2023 and April 2024, in which we posed to the authorities the following research questions: How is alleged ambiguity in the environmental institutions responsible for protecting fauna framed in Colombia's legal system? and How do availability, up-to-datedness and access to environmental information affect the public's perception of a situation for it to be considered an issue? We gathered data from six legal requests for information filed with the competent entities, to then analyze the availability, up-to-datedness and access to the environmental information on the protection of fauna.
The juicio de amparo—often translated as constitutional relief—is one of Mexico’s most distinctive contributions to global constitutionalism, recognized by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) for its capacity to provide the complainant with effective remedies. In recent history, the amparo enabled plaintiffs to obtain suspensiones (precautionary suspensions) of general laws and administrative measures. Environmental litigants relied on this tool to secure urgent protections, in exceptional cases achieving definitive results before the final ruling. At the same time, monopolies and corporate actors weaponized the amparo to block regulation and entrench privileges, constraining democratic decision-making. The 2024 reform limits the judiciary’s power to suspend general norms, curbing both the leverage of corporate actors and the capacity of civil society to prevent environmental harm. The challenge for the newly elected judiciary is to navigate this delicate balance: remaining responsive to democratic legitimacy while adhering strictly to constitutional principles, so that the amparo continues to serve as a safeguard for rights without becoming either a counter-majoritarian veto or an instrument of transient majorities.
In this article, we aim to examine the relationship between behaviors that are exclusively governed by internal legislation and those that are also subject to external legislation. The former are governed exclusively by prima facie duties towards oneself, while the latter establish the scope of prima facie duties towards others. We propose that the sphere of duties towards oneself serves as the basis for the entire system of reciprocal duties. The self-determination of the individual constitutes the cornerstone of a system of duties and rights across various levels or corresponding to the individual, social, and public spheres. Duties towards oneself allow for the evaluation of options in the cognitive process of self-regulation of the individual. From those premises, rational individuals can determine their own ends and exercise free will. This internal process is expressed in the world of the senses through behavior, which may include acts relating to oneself in the private sphere or acts relating to others in the social and public spheres. Therefore, their effects are not limited to the internal sphere but are part of complex reciprocal relationships.
This article explores the cognitive and legal limits of Artificial In-telligence (AI) in the context of legal argumentation, by using a hermeneutic methodology focused on Mexican amparo proceedings. While AI has become an increasingly valuable tool for legal professionals, optimizing time and automating tasks such as the drafting of lawsuits, agreements, and legal documents, its capacity to engage in complex legal reasoning remains questionable. This article analyzes whether AI can properly build conceptos de violaci & oacute;n1 up, the argumentative core of Amparo, which require a deeper axiological and ontological assessment that surpasses algorithmic programming.2 The central hypothesis of this article is that, despite recent advancements in natural language processing and machine learning, AI cannot replicate human brain plasticity, which allows jurists to interpret, adapt, and argue within ethical, social, and constitutional contexts.3 Employing a dogmatic and legal-philosophical methodology, this article examines the structure of Amparo, the theoretical foundations of legal argumentation, and the cognitive requirements for higher-level legal reasoning.4 The conclusion is that AI can serve as an instrumental support in legal practice, but it faces inherent limitations when confronted with the axiological and interpretive challenges of constitutional law.
This article critically explores the jurisprudential construction of the human right to the free development of personality within the Mexican constitutional framework, emphasizing the interpretive role of the federal judiciary after the 2011 constitutional human rights reform. Grounded in the principle of progressivity and the broader mandate of harmonizing domestic law with international human rights standards, this article examines how the free development of personality has been shaped by judicial reasoning on diverse legal themes. Drawing on qualitative, jurisprudential-analytical methodology, it researches a selection of landmark rulings issued by the Mexican Supreme Court and federal courts. These decisions are grouped into nine main categories in which the right to free development of personality has been recognized or expanded: gender identity, recreational drug use, marriage equalrights, bodily autonomy, and private autonomy in contractual relationships. Through doctrinal analysis and comparative reference, particularly to the Gerthe evolution of constitutional logic in Mexican case law.
