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The Civil Law Tradition and Constitutionalism in Twentieth-Century Mexico: The Legacy of Emilio Rabasa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

Charles A. Hale
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Constitutionalism in Mexico, indeed in Latin America generally, has always posed a problem for interpreters, especially for Anglo-American interpreters. It is true that adherence to a written constitution and to constitutional order has been central to Mexican political liberalism since independence. As a state-building philosophy, liberalism has functioned both as an ideology, in combat with inherited colonial and Hispanic patterns of government, and as an all-embracing myth serving to unify contending self-defined liberal factions. In both instances, liberals fought for, debated, and on occasion were able to implement basic Western constitutional principles, namely, the preservation of individual liberty and legal equality within a representative government whose powers were set out and limited in the articles of a written document. The problem of interpretation arises because of a widespread view that constitutional government in Mexico has been ineffective or, at best, that the struggle to achieve it has been arduous.

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Articles
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Law and History Review , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , Summer 2000 , pp. 257 - 280
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Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2000

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References

1. I. See, for example, Rosenn, Keith S., “The Success of Constitutionalism in the United States and Its Failure in Latin America: An Explanation,” Inter-American Law Review 22 (1990): 1–39.Google Scholar Interestingly enough, the “success” and “failure” theme is much less prominent in Rosenn's two earlier authoritative articles: “Judicial Review in Latin America,” Ohio State Law Journal 35 (1974): 785–819, and “The Protection of Juridical Independence in Latin America,” Inter-American Law Review 19 (1987): 1–35. See also Taylor, Michael C., “Why No Rule of Law in Mexico? Explaining the Weakness of Mexico's Judicial Branch,” New Mexico Law Review 27 (1997): 141–66.Google Scholar Taylor focuses primarily on the ineffectiveness of post-1917 reforms of the judicial system.

2. For a fuller discussion of nineteenth-century Mexican constitutionalism, see my “The Revival of Political History and the French Revolution in Mexico,” in The Global Ramifications of the Trench Revolution, ed. Klaits, Joseph and Haltzel, Michael H. (Washington and Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1994), 158–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Laboulaye's 1842 essay on Savigny, can be found in Études contemporaines sur l'Allemagne et les pays slaves, 3d ed. (Paris: Charpentier, 1868), 239–310.Google Scholar See also Kantorowicz, Hermann, “Savigny and the Historical School of Law,” Law Quarterly Review 53 (1937): 326–43.Google Scholar The only English version of Savigny's manifesto, On the Vocation of Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence, dates from 1831 (reprint, New York: Arno, 1975). The first recognition of Savigny in France may have been by Lerminier, Jean Louis Eugéne, who in his Introduction génerale à l'histoire du droit (Bruxelles: Hauman, 1829)Google Scholar, vi, testified to the impact Savigny's manifesto made on him as a law student forced to “learn the meager and dry formulas without animation or life” of the French Civil Code. Savigny, he said, made him realize the difference between loi and droit. On this general topic, see the illuminating study by Kelley, Donald R., Historians and the Law in Post-Revolutionary France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

4. This section of the article has been drawn from my The Transformation of Liberalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), chaps. 2–4. The advocates of an irremovable judiciary were undoubtedly influenced by the French anti-Jacobin campaign during the early Third Republic to establish irremovability in the Council of State, the supreme administrative tribunal. See Thomson, David, Democracy in France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1952), 59–60.Google Scholar The campaign produced at least two elaborate studies by jurists: Desjardins, Albert, Études sur l'inamovibilité de la magistrature (Paris: Durand, 1880)Google Scholar and Martin-Sazeaud, G., Recherches historiques sur l'inamovibilité de la magistrature (Paris: Imprimerie et Librairie Générale de Jurisprudence, 1881).Google Scholar

5. Merryman, John Henry, The Civil Law Tradition. An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Western Europe and Latin America, 2d ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, 2. On the civil law tradition generally, see also essays by Cappelletti, Mauro and Clark, David S. in Comparative and Private International Law. Essays in Honor of John Henry Merryman on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Clark, David S. (Berlin: Dunker and Humboldt, 1990)Google Scholar; Lawson, F. H., A Common Lawyer Looks at the Civil Law (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Law School, 1953)Google Scholar; Glendon, Mary Ann et al., Comparative Legal Traditions (St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1982).Google Scholar

6. The standard work on the comparative history of the judiciary with emphasis on the revolutionary reaction against the judiciary of the Old Regime in France is Dawson, John P., The Oracles of the Law (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Law School, 1968).Google Scholar For the text of the decree of August 16, 1790, see Stewart, John Hall, A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 143–57.Google Scholar

7. Merryman, Civil Law Tradition, 26–27.

8. Passages from Montesquieu (bk. 11, chap. 6), quoted by Cappelletti, Mauro, The Judicial Process in Comparative Perspective (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 192–93 n.Google Scholar

9. King, Jerome B., “Constitutionalism and the Judiciary in France,” Political Science Quarterly 80 (1965): 69–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. David, René, French Law (Baton Rouge: Louisana State University Press, 1972), 19.Google Scholar It is important to note that Montesquieu's influence on historical constitutionalism entailed his emphasis on the balance of powers between king, nobility, and commons, and not between the executive, legislative, and judiciary, since he saw the judicial power as null. Thus the U.S. notion of separation of powers (or checks and balances), which includes the judiciary, cannot be attributed directly to the influence of Montesquieu. See Palmer, R. R., The Age of the Democratic Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959–1964), 1:57–58.Google Scholar

11. In general, see Merryman, , “The Public Law-Private Law Distinction in European and United States Law,” Journal of Public Law 17 (1968): 3–19.Google Scholar

12. Kelley in Historians and the Law demonstrates the ambivalence of the postrevolutionary judicial establishment toward codification, which in part prompted its growing enthusiasm for history and for the German historical school of law.

13. On the evolution of cassation in France, see Cappelletti, Mauro, Judicial Review in the Contemporary World (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), 12–16.Google Scholar Cappelletti (also in Judicial Process) stresses the efforts to strengthen judicial review in post-World War II Europe and notes indications of convergence between the two Western legal systems. However, in France, the traditional Council of State, which was charged with reviewing abuses of administrative action, and the new Constitutional Council (1958) have remained basically political as opposed to judicial entities.

14. A Mexican Supreme “Court” on the U.S. pattern was established in the Constitution of 1824, but its immediate precedent was the Supreme “Tribunal,” created in the Spanish Constitution of 1812, an entity tied to the legislature (Cortes) and thus more French in orientation. From these mixed origins arose the conflict between the Court's early struggle for judicial independence and its extreme entanglement in politics, succumbing finally to executive authority by 1855. See the pioneering archivally based study by Arnold, Linda, Política y justicia: La Suprema Corte mexicana, 1824–1855 (Mexico: UNAM, 1996).Google Scholar

15. Rabasa, , La Constitución y la dictadura. Estudio sobre la organización política de México, 3d ed. (Mexico: Porrua, 1956), 244.Google Scholar

16. Daniel Cosío Villegas asserted that according to Rabasa's son Oscar, La Constitución y la dictadura was probably written in 1910 in time to present a copy to Porfirio Díaz before he left the country in May 1911. Cosío speculated further that the book may have been prompted by the famous Creelman interview of 1908, which opened the way for public discussion on how the country could pass “from a tyrannical to an institutional regime.” See Villegas, Cosío, La Constitución de 1857 y sus críticos, 4th ed. (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998; 1st ed. 1957), 59–60.Google Scholar The considerable emphasis Rabasa put on “la Conferencia Creelman y sus consecuencias,” chapter 11 of La Evolucion histórica de México, 2d ed. (Mexico: Porrua, 1956; 1st ed., 1920), lends credence to Cosío's suggestion.

17. Rabasa, , El Artículo 14: Estudio constitucional; El Juicio constitucional: Orígenes, teoría y extensión, 2 vols, in 1, 5th ed. (Mexico: Porrua, 1984), 133.Google Scholar

18. Cosío Villegas, Constitución de 1857, 51.

19. Rabasa, Artículo 14, 69–70.

20. Rabasa, Juicio constitucional, 160, 138–39.

21. Rabasa, Constitución, 193; also Juicio constitucional, 230–37.

22. There is, of course, an extensive technical literature on the juicio de amparo, and a debate on its origins, which is beyond the scope of this article. The standard work is Burgoa, Ignacio, El Juicio de amparo, 32d rev. ed. (Mexico: Porrua, 1995; 1st ed., 1943).Google Scholar In English is Baker, Richard D., Judicial Review in Mexico: A Study of the Amparo Suit (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971).Google Scholar Contrary to the conventional view, Andrés Lira González has argued persuasively for the colonial antecedents of the juicio in El Amparo colonial y el juicio de amparo mexicano (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1972). Article 101 also provided that the federal courts would resolve all controversies arising from federal laws that restricted the sovereignty of the states and from state laws that invaded the sphere of federal authority. These parts of the article have been much less applied than the protection of individual guarantees.

23. Rabasa, Artículo 14, 12.

24. Rabasa, Juicio constitucional, 108, 276–79, also 319.

25. Ibid., 278. On the amparo as cassation, see Baker, Judicial Review, 175–76; Karst, Kenneth L. and Rosenn, Keith, Law and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 130Google Scholar and following. For the numerous late nineteenth-century volumes of court reports devoted to cassation, see Clagett, Helen L. and Valderrama, David M., A Revised Guide to the Law and Legal Literature of Mexico (Washington: Library of Congress, 1973), 406–13.Google Scholar

26. See, for example, Rabasa, Juicio constitucional, 337

27. Ibid., 329–33. For the U.S. context, see Paul, Arnold M., Conservative Crisis and the Rule of Law: Attitudes of Bar and Bench, 1887–1895 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Fisher, William W. III et al., eds. American Legal Realism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Horowitz, Morton J., The Transformation of American Law, 1870–1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), chaps. 1–2.Google Scholar

28. Rabasa, Juicio constitucional, 333. In his “Brief Introduction to the Mexican Writ of Amparo,” Californa Western International Law Journal 9 (1979): 306–48 (designed to introduce U.S. lawyers to the juicio de amparo), Hector Fix Zaraudio states: “It is important to note at the outset the lack of a principle in the Mexican legal system comparable to stare decisis [i.e., the power and obligation of courts to base decisions on prior decisions]” (308).

29. For Rabasa's early position, see Constitución, 188–90. On the issue in France, see David, French Law, 27.

30. See Rabasa, Juicio Constitucional, 227; Ramírez, Felipe Tena, Derecho constitucional mexicano, 6th ed. rev. (Mexico: Porrua, 1963), 230, 411–12.Google Scholar References to Rabasa, positive and negative, were frequent in the debate over the organization of the judiciary (Article 94) in the Constituent Congress of 1916–17: see Diario de los debates del congreso constituyente, 2d ed. (Mexico: Secretaría de Gobernación, 1960), 2:701–22 (session of 20 Jan. 1917).Cosío Villegas dismissed Rabasa's assertion in 1912 that the judicial branch “is never a power,” but he failed to acknowledge Rabasa's later change of position. Andrés Lira in his “prólogo” to the 1998 edition of Cosío Villegas, Constitución de 1857, criticizes Cosío for his failure to come to grips with Rabasa's juridical ideas or with his two juridical studies.

31. Rabasa, , “Reforma a la constitución política de la república, con el fin de organizar la suprema corte de justicia como tribunal que pueda garantizar la rapidez de sus resoluciones y cumplir a las funciones técnicas que la constitución le encomienda,” Revista de ciencias sociales 5 (1928): 616–29Google Scholar, reprinted in Rabasa, , Antología de Emilio Rabasa, ed. Rojas, Andrés Serra (MexicoGoogle Scholar: Oasis, 1969), 2:188–99.Google Scholar The speech is dated 7 Jan. 1921. The event, including a subsequent debate on Rabasa's proposal, was reported in Excelsior, 8 Jan. 1921, reprinted in Rabasa, Antología, 2:199–204.

32. Rabasa, “Reforma a la constitución política,” in Antología, 2:194.

33. Rabasa was reacting in part against the Law of Amparo of 1919, which, after a half century of debate (that included Rabasa's Artículo 14) on the problem of overlapping cassation functions in federal tribunals and in the Supreme Court via amparo, eliminated cassation in name, though maintained it in effect with the “legality” function of the juicio de amparo. See Zamudio, Hector Fix, “Casación,” Diccionario jurídico mexicano, 2d ed. (Mexico: Porrua, 1987), 1:428–30Google Scholar; also idem, “Brief Introduction,” 324, where Fix Zamudio asserts that eighty percent of amparo suits were of the cassation type.

34. See Fenochio, Jaime del Arenal, “Luis Cabrera, director de la Escuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia,” Cuadernos del archivo histórico de la UNAM 10 (1989)Google Scholar; idem, “La Fundación de la Escuela Libre de Derecho,” Revista de investigaciones jurídicas, Cuaderno no. 1 (Mexico, 1988); Garciadiego, Javier, “Los Orígenes de la Escuela Libre de Derecho,” Revista de investigaciones jurídicas 17 (1993): 199–220Google Scholar; idem, “Movimientos estudiantiles durante la revolución mexicana,” in The Revolutionary Process in Mexico: Essays on Political and Social Change, 1880–1920, ed. Rodríguez, Jaime O. (Los Angeles: Latin American Center, 1990), 115–60Google Scholar; idem, Rudos contra científicos. La Universidad nacional durante la revolución mexicana (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 1997).

35. The only evidence we have on Rabasa's teaching of the 1920s comes from student notes on his two courses “Ciencia Política” and “Derecho Constitucional Mexicano” (1928) transcribed by J. J. González Bustamante, and published in Rabasa, Antología, 2:339–627. The text used in political science was by the Leacock, Canadian Stephen, Elements of Political Science (London: Constable, 1906)Google Scholar, which was published in Spanish (Mexico: Victoria, 1924). Rabasa may have been the translator. For Rabasa's comments on the juicio de amparo and cassation, see Rabasa, Antología, 2:590, 619–20; on differences between French and U.S. practices, 596; on religion, 473. On this period in the Escuela Libre, see Arenal, , “Los Años del estudiante Felipe Tena Ramírez en la Escuela Libre de Derecho,” Revista de investigaciones jurídicas 19 (1995): 343–82.Google Scholar Arenal is preparing a history of the ELD.

36. Rabasa, Oscar, “La Suprema corte es incompetente para conocer asuntos políticos,” Revista jurídica de la Escuela Libre de Derecho 1 (1922): 421–48.Google Scholar Article dated 20 September 1922.

37. Ibid., 430–31.

38. Rabasa, Oscar, El Derecho angloamericano. Estudio expositivo y comparado del “common law” (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1944), 16.Google Scholar The work was reprinted in 1982.

39. The Journal Boletín del Instituto de Derecho Comparado de México ran from 1948 to 1967 and has continued (to date) as Boletín Mexicano de Derecho Comparado. At least two significant comparative studies marked the Institute's twenty-fifth anniversary: Zamudio, Fix, Veinticinco años de evolución de la justicia constitucional, 1940–1965 (Mexico: UNAM, 1968)Google Scholar; and Cappelletti, Mauro, El Control judicial de la constitucionalidad de las leyes en el derecho comparado (Mexico: UNAM, 1966)Google Scholar [Eng. version as Judicial Process, above n. 8]. See also Cabrera, Lucio and Headrick, William Cecil, “Notas sobre la justicia constitucional en México y los Estados Unidos,” Inter-American Law Review 5 (1963): 229–76Google Scholar, a clear comparative and bilingual discussion of judicial procedures. On the lack of texts, see Fix Zamudio, “John Henry Merryman and the Modernization of Comparative Legal Studies,” in Comparative and Private International Law, 42–43. He was probably referring to the above work by Cappelletti, as well as to David, René, Los Grandes Sistemas jurídicos contemporaneos (Madrid: Aguilar, 1973)Google Scholar and Merryman, John Henry, La Tradición jurídica romanocanónica (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1971)Google Scholar, all out of print.

40. “Most distinguished,” according to Daniel Cosío Villegas, Constitución, 141. See also Arenal, Jaime del, “Vasconcelos, Herrera y Lasso y la Escuela Libre de Derecho,” Revista de investigaciones jurídicas 9 (1985): 71–102.Google Scholar

41. Lasso, Herrera y, Estudios constitucionales (Mexico: Polis, 1940)Google Scholar; Estudios constitucionales, 2d ser. (Mexico: Jus, 1964); Estudios políticos y constitucionales (Mexico: Porrua, 1986).

42. For Herrera y Lasso's criticism of Rabasa's attack on Article 1 of the Constitution of 1957, see Estudios (1940), 252–55; for his views on the juicio de amparo procedure, see Estudios (1964), 14, and Estudios (1986), 354; on establishing a court of cassation, see Estudios (1986), 379–80; on irremovability of judges and restructuring the Supreme Court, see Estudios (1964), 52–54. The respect commanded by Herrera y Lasso is evident in the posthumous testimony by the prominent jurist Antonio Martínez Báez in his introduction to Herrera y Lasso, Estudios (1986).

43. The three existing statues were to Manuel Crecencio Rejón, the “precursor,” Mariano Otero, the “creator,” and Ignacio Vallarta, “the realizer” of the juicio de amparo. Rabasa, in Herrera's view, should be recognized as the “consummator.” See Estudios (1986), 67–76.

44. See Sáñchez-Cordero Dávila, Jorge A., prólogo to Libro del cincuentenario del código civil (Mexico: UNAM, 1978), 11.Google Scholar Tena Ramírez's thesis entitled “La Función del derecho: del individualismo al socialismo” is unfortunately lost.

45. Duguit, Leon, Law in the Modem State (New York: Huebsch, 1919), xxxviiGoogle Scholar and passim. English translation of Les Transformations du droit public (Paris: Armand Colin, 1913). Spanish eds. (Madrid: Beltrán, 1915, 1926).

46. Tena Ramírez, Derecho constitucional, 58–65 (1st ed. [1944], 93). Cf. Statement by Duguit, quoted in Eisenmann, Charles, “Deux théoriciens du droit: Duguit et Hauriou,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger 110(1930): 294–95.Google Scholar

47. Tena Ramírez, Derecho constitucional, 442–43 (1st ed. [1944], 455–56). He cited Hauriou, , Principios de derecho público y constitucional (Madrid: Reis, 1927)Google Scholar, a translation of Principes du droit publique (Paris: Sirey, 1910), and inserted a long quotation from the work criticizing procedures of the U.S. Supreme Court. He also cited Lambert, , Le Gouvernement des juges et la lutte contre la législation sociale aux États-Unis; l'expérience américaine du controle judiciaire de la constitutionalité des lois (Paris: Giard, 1921).Google Scholar In addition, he quoted a passage from Abraham Lincoln warning of the usurpation of public authority by the Supreme Court. The passage was taken from Corwin, Edward S., La Constitución norteamericana y su actual significado (Buenos Aires: Kraft, 1942)Google Scholar, one of the few references to U.S. works by postrevolutionary Mexican jurists.

48. Tena Ramírez, Derecho constitucional, 462–63. Though the wording is slightly different, the statement in the first edition (1944), 476, is essentially the same, indicating that his views on this subject had not changed between 1944 and 1963.

49. Ibid., 412–13. See also Taylor, “Why No Rule of Law in Mexico?” (which includes details on the 1994 reform of the Supreme Court initiated by President Ernesto Zedillo).

50. Urbina, in O. Rabasa, Derecho angloamericano, 11.

51. Postrevolutionary jurists, such as Tena Ramírez, would have had strong support for this position from Lambert, Gouvernement des juges, (n. 47 above), an elaborate and penetrating study of the U.S. judicial system, especially during the “Lochner era” (1905–20). Lambert compared the solidification of judicial control in the United States to that of prerevolutionary France (129), and he asserted that judges in all times and places “have always had a social mindset impermeable to revolutionary or even reformist ferment” (272). Lambert was the founder and longtime director of a major French center of comparative law at the Université de Lyon.

52. The election of Genaro David Góngora Pimentel on 4 Jan. 1999 as the new president of the Supreme Court suggests this possibility. He is a highly respected jurist purported to favor expansion of the Court's interpretative powers and a further focus of its attention on constitutional questions. See La Jornada (Mexico), 5 Jan. 1999.