For those of us who are not legislators, judges, legal professionals or experts, understanding Mexico’s legal processes can be complicated, as they often contain unfamiliar and complex terms.
“Many lawyers have the bad habit of writing extremely convoluted words or [tend to] include Latinisms, for example,” says Velda Gámez, a professor at the School of Social Sciences and Government at the Tecnológico de Monterrey.
In response to this, Minister Ana Margarita Ríos Farjat and her Supreme Court of Justice of Mexico (SCJN) team launched last year an artificial intelligence (AI) tool called Sor Juana that aims to facilitate the understanding of its judicial processes.
With it, anyone can consult the public drafts of rulings currently being voted on by the SCJN. After choosing a ruling number, the person consulting can ask questions, and the chatbot answers them in plain language.
Thus, Sor Juana IA—its name alludes to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Mexican symbol of justice and resilience—brings justice closer to citizens and promotes transparency.
In the Face of Technical Language, a Valuable Tool
The tool can even be useful for researchers and academics as a source of information on case law, to provide context for recent cases and identify trends, as well as to facilitate the reviewing of legal literature.
“I use it to do research, understand current cases, and also when I teach, so my students don’t have to become law memorizers,” says Gámez.
The SCJN is the highest judicial authority in Mexico and its job is to defend the Constitution and ensure that all laws and government acts respect it. In 2023, when it decriminalized abortion at the federal level, it reviewed state laws and found them unconstitutional, for example.
In general, draft judgments by a Minister —where they suggest how a case should be resolved—tend to be long and technical documents.
Sor Juana IA allows anyone to understand what the SCJN is discussing, why it is important, and how it could affect them, even if they are not a party to the trial.
To create it, the Minister and her committee used tools such as Streamlit, Google, and Pinecone and wrote their own code. They fed it with the Minister’s draft rulings dating from 2022 to the present.
A Step Forward in the Modernization of the Mexican Judicial System
The platform is currently in its testing phase, so it only has access to one sentence at a time and to Ríos Farjat projects, it may also generate unexpected or inaccurate results.
However, its existence is encouraging as it represents a step forward in the modernization of Mexico’s judicial system and it could also lighten the workload of public officials.
“As lawyers, we shouldn’t romanticize this part of staying up reading until three or four in the morning; that’s what these types of tools are for,” says Gámez.
Currently, the lawyer and psychologist dedicates herself—in part—to researching cyber victimology, digital vulnerabilities, cybersecurity, and cybercrime, so she has welcomed the tool with open arms.
However, she warns that this, like any other AI tool, must be closely monitored to ensure that it does not reproduce biases or replace the work of ministers, judges, or experts.
“The most important thing is to always know what you’re feeding them with,” says Gámez.
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