Norma Lucía Piña Hernández

Norma Lucía Piña Hernández (born 29 July 1960) is a Mexican lawyer and educator who was the first women to serve as president of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation from 2023. She was a member of the Supreme Court from December 2015 to August 2025. She was recognised for her judicial independence after she refused to participate in the 2025 Mexican judicial elections.

Education Piña became a professor of primary-education pedagogy in 1978 at the Benemérita Escuela Nacional de Maestros, at Mexico City. She became a lawyer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1984. She became a specialist in social psychology and communication at the National Institute of Communication Science, in Madrid in 1978, She took courses on human rights at the Institute of the Federal Judiciary, and also she specializes in judicial argumentation, earning a certificate at the post-graduate division at the University of Alicante in Spain, on 2010.

Career

Prior being a Supreme Court justice, Piña worked at the Manuel M. Acosta Pedogeological Experimentation Elementary School at the Meritorious National School of Teachers. and as a legal opinion drafter for the Third Collegiate Administrative Court for the First Circuit from 1988 to 1992. She worked as a clerk for the Supreme Court of Justice from 1992 to 1998, and she was a judge for the third district of the State of Morelos from 1998 to 2000. Piña worked as a judge of Federal District for the Administrative Courts in 2000. She came to the Supreme Court of Justice to replace Olga Sánchez Cordero. She appeared in front of the Mexican Senate showing a formalist profile regarding her interpretation of philosophy,

Piña was appointed as a justice after her appearance on the Senate on 24 November 2015, after the two previous failed attempts, after being part of the judiciary for 27 years. On 28 September 2016, Piña was chosen by her colleagues as the president of the Primera Sala (First Hall) after the justices voted unanimously. She substituted the justice Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena, who was in charge to review the criminal and civil jurisprudence cases. She is president from 1 October 2016, to 30 September 2018.

She served as president of the Supreme Court of Mexico from 2023 to 2025, being the first woman ever to hold that position. She was a member of the Supreme Court from December 2015 to August 2025, when her seat was abolished as a result of the 2024 Mexican judicial reform and she refused to participate in the 2025 Mexican judicial elections. In 2025 she and UN Special Rapporteur Margaret Satterthwaite both received the International Association of Judges's Judicial Independence Award.