Victor Fuentes/Reform Agency
Wednesday, January 04, 2023 | 15:05
Mexico City- Loretta Ortiz Ahlf, Minister nominated to the Supreme Court of Justice by President Andrés Manuel López Orador, was defeated today in the election to preside over the Second Chamber of the highest court for the next two years.
By three votes to two, the Chamber elected Minister Alberto Pérez Dayán, appointed in 2012 by Felipe Calderón, who had already headed it in the 2015-2016 period, as president for the next two years.
The expectation since last year was that Ortiz would head the Chamber, since he only entered the Court in January 2022, and by tradition, these positions are assigned to ministers who have not previously held them.
At the time of the vote, however, Javier Láynez and Yasmín Esquivel supported Pérez Dayán, while only Luis María Aguilar voted for Ortiz.
In the First Chamber, the President will be Jorge Pardo Rebolledo, who had also previously headed the Chamber.
Pardo and Pérez Dayán, both federal career judges, replace Margarita Ríos-Farjat and Yasmín Esquivel, respectively, who headed the chambers in the first two-year period in which both were presided over by women.
It is the last time that Pardo and Pérez Dayán will preside over the Chambers, since the first retires in November 2027, while the second will finish his term on the Court in February 2026.
Arturo Zaldívar, who ended his Presidency on December 31, returned to the First Chamber, to which he was assigned since his arrival at the Court at the end of 2009, and in which he will replace the new President of the highest court, Norma Piña.
The rooms, each made up of five ministers, will restart their sessions on Wednesday, January 11. The First, specialized in civil and criminal matters, while the Second focuses on administrative and labor matters.
At this point, the Chambers are the ones that dispatch the vast majority of the matters that reach the Court, especially amparo in all its modalities, contradictions of criteria and requests to exercise the power of attraction.
The judicial reform of 2021, which relieved the Court of the obligation to review several minor matters, has had the initial effect of reducing the workload of the chambers, which in 2022 received 2,589 new files, 11.7 percent less. than in 2021, the year in which judicial activity was still affected by the pandemic.
The pending for 2023 are less than 500, the majority in the First Chamber, the lowest lag on record, derived from the elimination of claim resources, and the sending to other instances of non-conformities and reviews against bankruptcies of the Council of the Federal Judicature.
But Court records indicate that there are other matters that increased in 2022, such as contradictions between collegiate courts, which went from 361 to 429, amparos under review, from 567 to 671, and appeal requests, from 623 to 752, which, if maintained, could lead to the workload growing again in 2023.
