The Judicial Reform and What it Means for Mexico’s Democracy

Speaker

Honorable Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena, Henry J. Steiner Lecturer at Law in Human Rights, Harvard Law School

Moderators

Alicia Yamin, Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School; Director of the Global Health and Rights Project, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, Harvard Law School; Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health

Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies

About the Speaker

The Honorable Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena (Ret.) was born in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He holds a law degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, where he was a Fulbright-García Robles Scholar. Before joining the judiciary, he worked in private practice and served in senior positions at the Mexican Federal Revenue and Customs Service, including Chief Counsel, General Administrator for Large Taxpayers, and Commissioner of the Mexican Federal Revenue and Customs Service. During his tenure, he led institutional reforms advancing modernization, digitalization, and more effective enforcement of tax and trade regulations. His leadership was recognized by international organizations such as the OECD and the World Customs Organization.

He served as a Justice of Mexico’s Supreme Court from 2012 until his retirement in 2025. His jurisprudence focused on constitutional interpretation, emphasizing due process, access to justice, federalism, administrative law, and the limits of state power. He contributed to the development of standards on environmental protection, reproductive rights, marriage equality, the rights of Indigenous communities, and the relationship between domestic and international law.

He is currently the Henry J. Steiner Lecturer in Human Rights at Harvard Law School and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Autonomous University of Mexico Foundation.

He has contributed to legal scholarship as the translator of Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View by Stephen Breyer—authoring its preface for the 2018 Spanish-language edition published by Fondo de Cultura Económica—and is the author of the forthcoming Process and Punishment: Constitutional Foundations of Criminal Law, which examines how constitutional principles shape the design and operation of criminal justice in Mexico.

Please note that this Tuesday Seminar will be held on a Monday.

This event is presented in collaboration with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.