Mexico - Arbitration Law and Practice in Latin America - Second Edition

Ever since Mexico became a nation independent from Spain nearly two centuries ago, arbitration has been the subject of evolving statutory law, which is the primary legal source with case law merely serving to construe or supplement the laws passed by Congress and the international treaties ratified by the Senate in conformity with the Constitution.

Thus, the legislative history of Mexican arbitration law can be traced back to the Federal Constitution of 1824, which reproduced an identical provision contained in the Cadiz Constitution of 1812, stating that “nobody shall be precluded from exercising his right to terminate disputes through arbiter judges to be appointed by both parties whatever the stage of the trial is.”

The constitutional recognition of arbitration remained intermittently in force until 1853, only to never find its way back into the Federal Constitution of 1857, nor in that of 1917 currently controlling.

Nonetheless, as from 1854, several statutes have been consistently codifying the law on arbitration in relation to two well-demarcated types of disputes: civil and commercial.

From a State-to-State disputes’ perspective, Mexico took part in several Mixed Claims Commissions set up between 1839 and 1935 with the US and a number of European countries, which operated as true arbitration tribunals.

Likewise, Mexico was one of the pioneers to use public international arbitration to settle high-stake monetary and territorial disputes with countries like the US and France.

With this backdrop, the incorporation in 1993 of the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration (hereinafter the Model Law) into the Federal Commercial Code is widely perceived as a breakthrough in the development and growth of private commercial arbitration in Mexico at the domestic and international level.