Title: Incorporation of the Laws of War in the Mexican Legal Order
Abstract: This chapter will briefly summarize the origin of the category of war crimes, as well as the branch of law from which they derive: International Humanitarian Law (IHL). A review will be made of the legal instruments that characterize IHL and the categories that derive from them, such as international armed conflict, non-international armed conflictNon-international armed conflict or grave breaches. This chapter will also examine the IHL treaties to which Mexico is party and what the actual legal framework is. In order to conduct a thorough review of the legal framework, various codes of the 19th century were examined, as they relate directly to current criminal and military criminal codes. An achievement of this review was the realization that the 1871 Mexican Criminal Code already criminalized the violations during the conduction of war. Additionally, the review of the various military codes reveals how military discipline is the highest legal interest to be protected within the military order, superseding other legal interests like life or freedom. Lastly, the 1871 Mexican Criminal Code already granted combatant immunityCombatant immunity and excluded superior ordersSuperior orders as an exclusion of responsibility. This chapter will conclude, for example, that the provisions on "superior ordersSuperior orders" and "violations against the duties of humanity" are not a result of the implementation of contemporary International Law or IHL. Rather, Mexico's provisions are a product of its own legislative history and evolved concurrently with Mexican Law in the 19th century.
Publication Year: 2021
Publication Date: 2021-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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