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When More Leads to More: Constitutional Amendments and Interpretation in Mexico 1917-2020

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2022

Andrea Pozas-Loyo ,
Camilo Saavedra-Herrera Open the ORCID record for Camilo Saavedra-Herrera [Opens in a new window]  and
Francisca Pou-Giménez
Andrea Pozas-Loyo
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Institute for Legal Research, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico. Email: andrea.pozas@unam.mx.
Camilo Saavedra-Herrera
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Institute for Legal Research, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico. Email: camilos@unam.mx.
Francisca Pou-Giménez
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Institute for Legal Research, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico. Email: franciscapou@unam.mx.
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Abstract

Mexico’s 1917 Constitution has gone through 737 reforms; no other codified constitution has been subjected to such a constant pattern of renewal through amendment. We argue that the study of Mexican patterns offers important theoretical insights for the study of constitutional change by calling into question the generalizability of the thesis—articulated by Donald Lutz and currently endorsed by most specialists in the field—according to which amendment and interpretation are substitute means of constitutional updating. Based on two original data sets containing all constitutional amendments and all Supreme Court precedents on constitutional matters from 1917 to 2020, we find that in Mexico hyper-reformism is correlated to a steep increase in the number and diversity of binding constitutional precedents. Quantitative and qualitative analysis shows that these precedents not only apply the Constitution, but substantively revise it, suggesting that, in Mexico, amendment and interpretation are not alternative but complementary channels of constitutional change. Our account suggests that, in Mexico, hyper-reformism has actually led to innovative constitutional interpretation as a mechanism to cope with its effects. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and comparative insights this case offers for better understanding the nature, causes, and effects of the different modalities of constitutional change.

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Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , February 2025 , pp. 1 - 32
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Bar Foundation

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Footnotes

This article has been updated since its intital publication. For details, see: https://doi.org/10.1017/lsi.2022.78.

The authors are thankful for the enriching comments and suggestions of our colleagues at the Seminar of Empirical Legal Studies (SEED) at the IIJ-UNAM and participants of the University of Texas at Austin Conference on Constitution-Making and Constitutional Change. We are particularly grateful to Hector Fix-Fierro, whose work and generosity is an unending source of inspiration, and to Richard Albert, Karina Ansolabehere, Erika Bárcena, Josafat Cortez, Pablo Kalmanovitz, Julio Ríos-Figueroa, Ricardo Sepúlveda, and the Theses Compilation and Systematization Coordination of the Mexican Supreme Court. This research was possible thanks to the committed assistance of Bernardo Cantú, María León González, Eugenio Mora Zamora, and David Granados Avilés, as well as to the financial support received from UNAM-PAPIIT, grant IA301421.

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