Opinion ID: 2798172
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mexican Federal Statutory Law

Text: An elaborate regime of Mexican federal statutory law—while certainly allotting some power to the states—further establishes federal supremacy with respect to the property at issue. A few examples will suffice. The Mexican States have sought damages for harm to wildlife. But the General Law of Wildlife (GLW) 14 establishes, as relevant here, that the “Federal Attorney General’s Office for Environmental Protection . . . shall exercise in an exclusive manner the action for liability for damage caused to wildlife and its habitat.” GLW, Article 107. Additionally, while Mexico’s General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection (GLEBEP) affords some power to Mexican states over environmental matters, see GLEBEP, Article 7, only the federal government is responsible for “[a]ttending to matters affecting the ecological balance . . . 13 The Mexican States claim that they own certain islands off their coasts. The root of this argument is a provision in Article 48 of the Mexican Constitution. That article states that “islands, keys and reefs of adjacent seas belonging to national land territory, the continental shelf, the sea beds of the islands, keys and reefs, the territorial seas, inland marine waters, and the space over national land territory, shall depend directly from the Government of the Federation, with the exception of those islands over which the States have up to the present, exercised their jurisdiction.” Mexican Constitution Article 48 (emphasis added). Article 48 has resulted in great uncertainty in Mexico concerning ownership of these islands. See generally Vargas, Mexico and the Law of the Sea 405–484 (discussing history of relationship of states to Mexico’s islands). However, the states have “abstained from enacting legislation to regulate islands offshore their coasts” in part because they have read Article 48 to provide that the “Federal Government . . . legally and politically exercise[s] control over Mexico’s ‘Insular territory.’” Id. at 455; see also id. at 439 (stressing that the islands have effectively been under federal control since passage of the 1917 constitution). We are not persuaded that the Mexican States have demonstrated the mandatory proprietary interest in these islands. 14 We use the translations of Mexican federal statutory law and the Mexican States’ constitutions provided to us by the parties. 15 Case: 13-31070 Document: 00513028113 Page: 16 Date Filed: 05/01/2015 No. 13-31070 originating in the territory or areas subject to other States’ sovereignty and jurisdiction,” see GLEBEP, Article 5. Given that the Deepwater Horizon incident “originated” outside Mexico’s territorial boundaries, Article 5 signifies that the Mexican States have ceded the power to protect these resources to the Mexican federal government. See Mexican Law: A Treatise § 12.61 (highlighting federal control over environmental enforcement); Zamora et al., Mexican Law 122 (observing that, in Mexico, “environmental protection remains almost exclusively a federal matter”).