JUAREZ -- The brand new courthouse in Juárez -- a cluster of small courtrooms with fresh paint and new furniture -- may seem unremarkable to an American visitor but it represents a historic change in Mexico.

In these rooms, a sweeping legal reform is taking place.

For the first time, the prosecutor, the defense lawyer, the judge and the accused are in the same room and proceedings are open to the public. The parties take turns presenting their case to the judge in the back-and-forth familiar to anyone watching televised courtroom dramas.

The old way was a bureaucratic system in which lawyers sent written depositions to a judge sitting in an office -- not a courtroom. The parties often did not meet face to face and the process dragged on for months if not years.

Read the entire article here