Who is Norma Lucía Piña Hernández, the new president of the SCJN?

At 12:48 p.m. this Monday, January 2, 2023, Norma Lucia Pina Hernandez protested as the first president of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN).

With six votes in favor and five against, those who favored the minister Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena and in the third round of voting, the now minister-president obtained the support of her peers to occupy the post for the next four years, replacing Arturo Zaldívar, who presided over the SCJN and the Federal Judicial Council (CJF) from January 2, 2019 to December 31, 2022.

At the time, Piña Hernández, as Minister of the Court, voted in favor of the decriminalization of abortion in Coahuila, the recreational use of marijuana, the militarization of the public force, as well as the elimination of informal preventive detention.

The presiding minister is law degreefrom the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a PhD in Law from the same institution.

In addition, he has studied Social Psychology and Communication specialties; in Constitutional and Administrative and Judicial Law and in Criminal Law, as well as in Legal Argumentation.

Although she began her professional career as a Primary Education teacher at the “Manuel M. Acosta” Pedagogical Experimentation School attached to the Benemérita National School of Teachers, she soon ventured into the legal area. She worked as an Academic Technician at the Legal Research Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico; Designer Secretary in the Third Collegiate Court in Administrative Matters of the First Circuit and Study and Account Secretary in the First Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.

Later he was judge by Opposition in the Third District Court in the State of Moreloyes; Fifth District Judge in Administrative Matters in the Federal District; Circuit magistrate by Opposition; and ratified magistrate in the Fourteenth Administrative Collegiate Court of the First Circuit.

She has also been a magistrate in the Twentieth Collegiate Court in Administrative Matters of the First Circuit and is currently a minister of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.

Piña Hernández would preside over the SCJN and the CJF until December 31, 2026.

diego.badillo@eleconomista.mx