Intimate partner violence is a major public health issue worldwide. New Latin American democracies in search of legitimacy attempted to tackle it through aspirational laws confronting gender norms,...Show moreIntimate partner violence is a major public health issue worldwide. New Latin American democracies in search of legitimacy attempted to tackle it through aspirational laws confronting gender norms, but studies on their empirical impact are lacking. Strategies focused on the criminal justice system to protect and empower women have been criticized by critical feminists for entrenching the patriarchal status quo. The findings of this paper back their concerns as criminal code reforms in Mexico are not associated with lower levels of intimate partner violence. Both the inappropriate design of the law and its lack of enforcement contribute to making the law a dead letter. I use the array of adoption of criminal code reforms in Mexican states to conduct a difference-in-differences statistical analysis. I then compare two states through a qualitative analysis to investigate causes behind the law’s lack of impact.Show less