Mexican Law Review

Between Legality and Legitimacy: Behavioral Insights into Digital Piracy and Regulatory Disobedience

2026-01-09T20:46:48+00:00

In the past few decades, the exponential growth of digital goods has overwhelmingly reshaped the landscape of cultural production, access, and distribution, creating new challenges in terms of legality, legitimacy, and accessibility. One prominent issue that has emerged is digital piracy, a practice that continues to gain ground worldwide. While often considered a violation of intellectual property rights, it remains widespread, with segments of society viewing it as morally acceptable, thus highlighting a gap between legal standards and public moral perception. This disconnect has prompted a growing debate on how digital piracy should be regulated, particularly when traditional legal mechanisms seem ineffective in addressing the underlying causes of this phenomenon. This article aims to develop a comprehensive framework that views digital piracy not merely as an infringement of law, but as a multifaceted social issue, incorporating moral, cognitive, distributive, and participatory governance dimensions. It also proposes a paradigmatic shift from punitive approaches to more equitable, inclusive regulatory strategies. Our findings show that punitive legal models fail to account for the social, moral, and psychological factors instigating piracy. Instead, piracy is often framed as a form of resistance against perceived injustice and exclusion from cultural goods. This article concludes that addressing digital piracy in a more meaningful way requires a more nuanced regulatory approach, combining incentives, participatory governance, and distributive justice to create a fairer and more ethical framework for managing piracy in the digital era.

The Jurisprudential Construction of the Human Right to the Free Development of Personality in Mexico

2026-01-09T20:46:43+00:00

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 equality, no-fault divorce, same sex concubinage, reproductive autonomy, children’s rights, bodily autonomy, and private autonomy in contractual relationships. Through doctrinal analysis and comparative reference, particularly to the German Constitutional Court’s Elfes and Cannabis decisions—this article shows the evolution of constitutional logic in Mexican case law.

Human Brain Plasticity as a Limiting Factor in the Use of Artificial Intelligence as a Tool in Legal Argumentation

2026-01-09T20:46:44+00:00

This article explores the cognitive and legal limits of Artificial Intelligence (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 violación up, the argumentative core of Amparo, which require a deeper axiological and ontological assessment that surpasses algorithmic programming. 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. 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. 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.

The Evolution of Professional Expertise in Moral Damage Assessment

2026-01-09T20:46:49+00:00

This article addresses the use of experts in the assessment of moral damage. It analyzes several different systems used to quantify compensation for moral damage: the subjective system, the scale-based system, the scale system with an algorithm, and the mixed expert-judicial system. The article reveals that the complexities involved in the quantification of moral damage and the lack of uniformity and objectivity in the application of these various systems demonstrate the need for standardized methodologies. While the use of experts has become increasingly accepted, this practice faces challenges in calculating complete and equitable compensation. The article concludes by suggesting that a robust mixed expert-judicial system would be the most advantageous, as judicial decisions are based on objective criteria provided by experts who specialize in the disciplines most relevant to a particular case, such as psychology, medicine, criminology, social work, dentistry, bioethics, engineering, and accounting. Using this system would allow for a more individualized and equitable assessment of moral damages, thereby overcoming both the limitations inherent in a system that uses judicial discretion alone and the rigidity of systems that utilize fixed scales.

Duties Towards Oneself and Self-Regarding Actions in the System of Reciprocal Duties

2026-01-13T18:58:31+00:00

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.

War Crimes and Environmental Crimes in Ukraine and Gaza

2026-01-13T18:58:30+00:00

In violation of current International Law and International Humanitarian Law in force, ongoing aggressions in Ukraine and Gaza endanger the entire international institutional and legal framework, to the extent that both deny the basic rule that the use of force does not create title over a given territory in present day international law.