MEXICO: An Introduction to Public Law

The Digital Future of Public Law 

Normally, when people think of the future, they think of the opportunities, efficiency, and resources that technology and new forms of social organisation could offer to human beings of that time. Regardless of whether this exercise is carried out in the year 1800 or in the year 2023, anyone who tries to imagine the future will surely think of a sophisticated human being, in comparison with the human of the present time, fully adapted to the contemporary culture and new forms of delivery and access to public and private services, as well as to the procurement and use of goods and essential or ancillary products. From a legal point of view, this model would be unthinkable without the protection of a regulatory framework to achieve, in a stable manner, social, cultural, and economic welfare.

If we assume as valid the premise that the future is an event that is projected on a continuous timeline, but has not yet happened, we must necessarily recognise the inherent variability or fallibility of any projected future and, therefore, the possibility that the future, as projected or desired, may or may not be. Perhaps for this reason we could agree with the perspective of Elon Musk when he referred to the Silicon Valley generation having failed to deliver the future to humanity, instead focusing efforts more on the development of social networks, media, and advertising than on developing the technologies that would trigger the life that was projected at the end of the previous millennium.

However, it is important to recognise that, although at a slower pace than information and communication technologies, in this era of digitalisation, technologies capable of improving the daily lives of people and companies – let us call them “social technologies” – have made their way through their own value and the demand of different users. Thus, the human being of this future has incorporated into their daily life the use of electronic media to perform operations and access public services, financial services, education, health, tax payment, regulatory compliance, access to justice services, and many more purposes.

One of the most important challenges that this technological advance faces today is that the business world and the public law world seem to be dissociated and communicating vessels have not been built between one world and another, which would allow the use of the same tools for the identification of people, information of formal and legal value, or to demonstrate legal situations or individual rights. Even this lack of co-ordination is present both among public- and private-sector stakeholders.

Accordingly, we can highlight cases such as the electronic signature of the Tax Administration Service (SAT), which serves to identify a taxpayer or applicant for public administrative services and can even be used to identify a person before the federal courts, but has no use or value to identify a person who may require services from state entities or courts.

Likewise, in the case of public registries of public concessions, professions, real estate ownership, or even the civil registry itself, the information registered in their respective databases or information repositories is not associated with the identity recognised by the SAT, which implies that for each procedure or service request submitted by an individual or a company, they have to complete all the necessary stages to prove their identity or demonstrate their respective rights. Even in the case of lawsuits, which are processed electronically, individuals have to use the identification mechanisms established by each court in order to be able to verify their identity and the existence of rights that were already recognised, for example, in the aforementioned public registries, not to mention that even the lawyers who file the lawsuit have to verify that they have the necessary licences to practice their profession each time they intervene in a new lawsuit.

Furthermore, private corporations, which have historically recognised the so-called official IDs, such as passports, national identity cards, driver’s licences, and professional licences as elements to confirm the identities of the individuals with whom they interact and carry out transactions, do not recognise the legal personality evidenced by the electronic signatures of the SAT, or other authorities, forcing the users of services or purchasers of goods to use the means of identification and authentication determined by each private corporation, not to mention that each registration in the corresponding private platforms represents a new risk of impersonation, as well as the transmission of confidential information and personal data whose treatment is subject, in each case, to the specific terms and conditions and authorisations to be collected.

We must not forget that the purpose of public law, in addition to regulating its own legal relationships, is to simplify the interaction of individuals with the state, and there is even a constitutional mandate to do so. Thus, currently the state has the opportunity to understand the trends of the times and even to lead a normative and regulatory change to project the bases for the institutionalisation of tools that would allow individuals and corporations to participate safely and efficiently in the digital environment.

In this regard, it should be noted that legal doctrine and current civil law provisions recognise that individuals and legal entities have certain inherent and inalienable attributes: name; domicile; assets; nationality; and marital status or form of incorporation. A prospective exercise in the timeline leads us to imagine a future in which these five attributes could be recognised by a digital mechanism that would unquestionably certify their truthfulness and their legal implications.

In addition, this mechanism could provide the confidentiality and protection guidelines that may guarantee a legitimate use of such information, restricting the treatment of such information to the minimum necessary that must be observed by both authorities and individuals, in line with the specific transaction to be carried out.

The magnitude of this venture and the public interest in protecting the correct use of such information does not seem to be a task that can legitimately be headed by private entities, but rather by the state, through public law, which can equitably and impartially oversee the rights of the entire population.

If this hypothetical future were to become a reality, it would not be difficult to imagine that the mechanism employed to implement it – probably a digital application – would provide access to a repository of verified, and therefore truthful, information and documentation, making it possible to demonstrate the rest of the attributes of individuals and companies, such as:

1. their identification data;
2. domicile;
3. intellectual property rights;
4. access to financial services;
5. nationality;
6. medical records;
7. educational certificates;
8. licences to exercise their respective trade or profession;
9. complete official paperwork before the authorities;
10. receive official and formal notifications from individuals;
11. request the provision of public services; and
12. verify their legal personality and even their property rights before a court or a specific authority.

Another useful feature of this institution would be that individuals could take advantage of it in the execution of private acts, providing legal certainty to their counterparties and speeding up the processing of all types of procedures aimed to resolve disputes between parties. A further positive consequence of a mechanism of this nature would be that it could eliminate the distance and inequity between highly technological individuals or companies and those that are not yet so. Additionally, regulations establishing the basis for this tool would definitely have to favour its democratic use and set the necessary controls and barriers to avoid, at all costs, the authoritarian use of this information by the state entities.

From the perspective of the public administration, the different ministries would continue to lead, regulate, and administer those issues and matters within their jurisdiction, according to their legal attributions, but their actions or the provision of public services would simply be channelled through this electronic platform.

Undoubtedly, legal professionals and law school students would have to spend a significant amount of time and effort in understanding and mastering the use of these technologies in order to correctly advise their respective clients in accordance with the regulatory framework, and master the correct understanding of dispute resolution procedures, as well as the changes that are bound to occur over time. It is possible to anticipate that individuals and companies will use this technology autonomously, with the risk of not understanding the essence and origin of the rights that it materialises.

Finally, it is important to recognise that all of the above is just an event projected in a continuous line of time, which has not yet happened; only the time that lies ahead will tell if this generation has fulfilled its debt to humanity or if, instead, it has handed over to a future generation the challenge to accomplish one of the purposes of public law, which is to simplify and to improve the lives of individuals, regardless of the particular point in time.