Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1857

The Political Constitution of the Mexican Republic of 1857, often called simply the Constitution of 1857, was the liberal constitution promulgated in 1857 by Constituent Congress of Mexico during the presidency of Ignacio Comonfort. Ratified on February 5, 1857, the constitution established individual rights, including universal male suffrage, and others such as freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right to bear arms. It also reaffirmed the abolition of slavery, debtors' prisons, and all forms of cruel and unusual punishment such as the death penalty. The constitution was designed to guarantee a limited central government by federalism and created a strong national congress, an independent judiciary, and a small executive to prevent a dictatorship. Liberal ideals meant the constitution emphasized private property of individuals and sought to abolish common ownership by corporate entities, mainly the Catholic Church and indigenous communities, incorporating the legal thrust of the Lerdo Law into the constitution.
A number of articles were contrary to the traditional powers of the Catholic Church, such as the ending of Catholicism as official religion, the nationwide establishment of secular public education, the removal of institutional fueros, and the forced sale of Church property. Conservatives strongly opposed the enactment of the constitution, which polarized Mexican society. The Reform War began as a result, with liberals winning on the battlefield over conservatives. The losing conservatives sought another way back into power, and their politicians invited Maximilian I of Mexico, a Habsburg, to establish a Mexican monarchy with the Church's support. The republican government-in-domestic-exile was headed by President Benito Juárez as the legitimate Mexican government under the constitution. With the ouster of the French and the defeat of the conservatives in 1867, the Restored Republic was again governed under the 1857 Constitution. The constitution was durable but its provisions not always followed in practice. It was revised in 1874 to create a Senate. It remained as Mexico's constitution until 1917 although many of its provisions ceased to be enforced.

Background

Having overthrown the dictatorship of Antonio López de Santa Anna in 1855, liberals sought to implement their ideology in new laws and briefly had Juan Álvarez in the presidency. As established in Plan of Ayutla, he convened the Constituent Congress on October 16 to establish headquarters in Dolores Hidalgo and to draft a new constitution embodying liberalism. The following year, the incumbent president, Ignacio Comonfort, endorsed the call to move the headquarters to Mexico City.
The Congress was divided between two main factions. Most members were moderate liberals and planned to restore the Constitution of 1824 with some changes. Some of the prominent figures were Mariano Arizcorreta, Marcelino Castañeda, Joaquín Cardoso, and Pedro Escudero y Echánove. Their opponents the pure liberals, who wanted to make a completely-new constitution. Among them were Ponciano Arriaga, Guillermo Prieto, Francisco Zarco, José María Mata, and Santos Degollado. The discussions were heated and lasted over a year.
President Comonfort interfered through its ministers for the moderate faction, which he preferred. Despite opposition from the executive branch and the minority, pure liberals ensured that their proposals successfully included: the prohibition of purchase of property by ecclesiastical corporations, the exclusion of the clergy in public office, the abolition of ecclesiastical and military fueros, and freedom of religion.
Those reforms were contrary to the interests of the Catholic Church. During the sessions of Congress, an insurrection for the clergy supported by conservatives, the staunchest opponents of the liberals, gathered force in Zacapoaxtla and Puebla. Comonfort sent federal troops and defeated the rebels.
The Constitution was promulgated on February 5, 1857, but the clergy threatened that whoever swore the Constitution would be excommunicated.

Major provisions

The Constitution of 1857, with 8 titles and 128 articles, was similar to the 1824 Constitution. Both federalism and representative republicanism were again implemented, and there were 23 states, a territory, and the federal district. It supported the autonomy of municipalities in which each state was divided politically. These were most relevant articles:

2. Abolition of slavery. It was ratified by the Decree of Abolition of Slavery on September 15, 1829, by President Vicente Guerrero.
3. Free public, secular education.
5. Freedom of vocation, with a ban on contracts with loss of freedom for the sake of work, education, or religious vows.
7. Freedom of speech.
10. Right to bear arms.
12. Abolition of titles of nobility.
13. Prohibition of privileges to individuals or institutions or of special courts.
22. Prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment or the confiscation of property.
23. Abolition of death penalty for political prisoners,.
27. No civil or ecclesiastical corporation allowed to hold or manage real estate except buildings for services or for the purpose of the institution.
30. Definition of Mexican nationality.
31. Obligations of Mexicans.
36. Obligations of citizens.
39. The sovereignty of the nation comes from the people.
40. Mexico is constituted as a representative, democratic, federal Republic, composed of free and sovereign States in everything concerning its internal regime.
50. Division of powers: executive, legislative, and judicial.
76. On the election of the president through indirect suffrage in the first degree and secret ballot.
77. Requirements to be elected president.
101 & 102. Amparo
123. Regulation of religion.
124. Prohibition on internal customs checkpoints.
128. Inviolability of the Constitution.

Despite problems in Texas, some deputies unsuccessfully proposed a law granting certain rights to foreign colonization by arguing that the country needed to be settled.

Articles 101 & 102

In 1841, Mexican justice Manuel Crescencio Rejón was instrumental in placing the inaugural Amparo in the constitution of the Republic of Yucatán, a procedure adopted to strengthen the judicial enforcement of individual rights in that state. In 1847, Rejón and Mariano Otero were members of the six-member committee appointed to draft up the new 1857 Federal Constitution, that abrogated the Seven Laws. Borrowing the Yucatán's Constitution, Otero promoted an Amparo procedure, known as the Fórmula Otero, on the national level as part of the Act of Reforms , which was almost universally approved. The "Otero Formula", a provision of the Act of Reforms which persists today, provided that the protection granted by an amparo judgment should contain no general declarations about the law or act complained of, thus having no effect beyond preventing the application of the constitutionally defective law to the immediate party complainant. The 1847 Reform Act officially incorporated and amended, the Federal Constitution of 1824, to operate while the next constitution was drafted. The 1857 constitution was Mexico's first "constitutionalization" of a writ of Amparo.
Amparo is the Spanish word for "protection". The generic legal concept of "amparo" is the annunciation of individual guarantees, and the judicial proceedings to protect those rights. Section 101 of the 1857 constitution established that the amparo will lie only against violations of individual rights. The conscious division of Amparo into two sections in the 1857 Mexican Constitution, as opposed to the United States Constitution, meant that, although it protects against violation of constitutional privileges, it may not issue an order to maintain respect for treaties and laws.
The 1857 Constitution provided that a special law relating to the procedure and regulation of an amparo suit should be enacted subsequently. This law of Amparo was divided into four sections: 1) violations of individual rights; 2) violations of state sovereignty; 3) violations of the Power of the Union; and 4) decisions and sentences. The first Amparo Law had little effect due to the French intervention, first by the war in which the nation was then engaged, and later by the establishment of the Empire under Maxmilian of Austria which suspended constitutional government. The Secretary of Justice drafted and presented a new law at the end of the year 1868, which was approved by Congress and promulgated on 20 January 1869. This law was more simple in its procedure, establishing a single suit to be judged in a summary proceeding by the district courts of the federal judiciary. This was likewise also superseded by an Amparo law in 1882., promulgated on 14 December 1882 and effective the following year. The use of the legislative writ of Apmaro increased significantly during the life span of the 1857 constitution, for example in 1869 only 123 suits were decided, in 1880, only a little more than a decade later, the number of cases had risen to 2,108, and in a three-month period from June 1901 to August 1901 there were 957 amparo suits heard and decided. In 1897, the first Federal Code of Civil Procedure was enacted, which included an Amparo suit, thus effectively repealing the 1882 law, followed by a similar Federal Code of Civil Procedure provision in 1908, which reflected the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. The writ of Amparo legislation transformed Amparo from "an instrument lacking precise contours to a true proceeding directed at violative official acts, with a particular emphasis placed on the protection of life and liberty of the citizens."
The 1857 Constitution served as an important model for the subsequent current 1917 constitution, establishing a firm foundation for the amparo. The 1917 constitution largely tracks the 1857 constitution in order of article and text, only argumenting and clarifying certain clauses. Therefore, both of these amaro provisions featured in the subsequent 1917 Mexican constitution, i.e. article 101 was identical to article 103 ; and article 102 corresponded to article 107, with amendments Currently, amparo exists in 17 other countries, however, there is no comparable mechanism in the common law.