MEXICO CITY, (Reuters) – One of Mexico’s top judges copied “a substantial part of content” for her 1987 thesis from another student’s work presented a year earlier, her university said yesterday, following a plagiarism scandal made public last month.
Justice Yasmin Esquivel has been embroiled in controversy since December when local news outlet Latinus published accusations she had plagiarized the work, as she stood to potentially become the new head of the country’s top tribunal.
Esquivel, who has repeatedly denied the accusations, lost a vote at the beginning of the month to justice Norma Pina, who became Mexico’s first female Supreme Court president.
Citing a “comparative analysis of content, chronology and writing styles,” the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), one of Latin America’s most prestigious universities, said an academic integrity committee concluded Esquivel had copied her thesis.
UNAM, a public institution, said it lacked the power to revoke Esquivel’s degree and it was forwarding its findings to Mexico’s education ministry.
The professor who advised both Esquivel’s thesis and the one she allegedly copied is also under investigation, the university said.