Mexico City.- The Federal Administrative Court (TFJA) determined that UNAM cannot sanction Yasmín Esquivel Mossa, Minister of the Supreme Court of Justice, for the alleged plagiarism of the bachelor’s thesis she presented in 1987, reported at the end of 2022.
The above is because on January 10, 2023, the Attorney General of UNAM sent the then Rector, Enrique Graue, an opinion in which he concluded that the university “lacks a legal norm that expressly allows it to withdraw, cancel or revoke the academic degrees it grants.”
Alfredo Sánchez Castañeda, the Attorney General who issued the opinion, also considered that the university has no jurisdiction over its former students, and in its case, the most it could do was “condemn” plagiarism.
Esquivel filed a lawsuit with the TFJA, until now not publicly known, to demand that this “opinion” be recognized as an administrative act of authority, binding on UNAM. The Sixth Metropolitan Regional Chamber of said court ruled in his favor.
“The existence of the subjective right derived from the letter AGEN/09/2023 issued by the Attorney General of UNAM, whose validation was requested by the plaintiff (Esquivel), is declared and the defendant authorities are ordered to comply with the corresponding obligations derived from the letter, and to restore the plaintiff (Esquivel) to the enjoyment of her rights,” ordered the TFJA.
In addition, the court declared the nullity of the acts of UNAM after the letter of January 10, 2023, including the call to the University Ethics Committee (Cuética) to investigate the alleged plagiarism.
The Cuética’s conclusions on the case have not been published, because it is prevented by a civil lawsuit by the Minister before the Superior Court of Justice of Mexico City, where Judge José Manuel Salazar Uribe granted the “precautionary measure” to silence the UNAM in April 2023.
The TFJA ruling, which was notified on March 7, is not final. UNAM appealed the decision through a fiscal review appeal, which was admitted on June 19 by the Fifth Collegiate Court on Administrative Matters, where Esquivel’s lawyers presented arguments on July 11 in favor of confirming the first instance ruling.
It is worth mentioning that, during the trial, the notifications in the TFJA Bulletin have not mentioned the Minister as the plaintiff, but rather Ulises Cortés Dehesa, the lawyer who has handled the administrative part of her litigation against UNAM.
Once the case reached the collegiate court, however, it was clarified in public notifications that the plaintiff is Esquivel Mossa, who is accused of the alleged almost total plagiarism of the thesis that the student Edgar Ulises Báez defended a year before her, in 1986, which the Minister has denied.
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