YAY MEXICO! President Felipe Calderon signed a constitutional amendment reforming the Mexican judicial system into law today, which is a totally cool, awesome thing for him to do. Now, the problem is shifting the system to a US-style, innocent until presumed guilty, trial-by-jury, all the nuts and bolts thing- which has to be done by 2016 and includes re-training lawyers, judges and everyone on how a trial by jury actually works.
I can't begin to say how potentially awesome this could be- and more importantly, it could provide an important bit of ammo in the immigration debate we're currently having in this country. First of all: Mexico went through 70 some years of corporatist, corrupt rule of the PRI and only just knocked them out of power in 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox- so it's going to take them awhile to work all the institutionalized crap holding them back out of their system. Land reform and business reform are also sorely overdue- and hopefully Calderon tackles them head on. But reforming the judicial system is still a hugely awesome step for them to take!
Implications for the US: well, basically, if Mexico can start making moves towards transparent government, open economic policies and make it easier for people to start business and move up, perhaps you'll see less people eager to cross the border. Probably not- (America is a beacon to the world. People come from allllllll over!) but at the same time, helping Mexicans that want to start small business do so with ease can only be good for their economy. So in the long term, yes, the reform process could have implications for us as Americans- but probably not in the short term. Either way, this is still awesome.
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