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

Law and History Review

Volumn 18, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 257-280

  Hale, Charles A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF IOWA   (United States)

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EID: 85011519009     PISSN: 07382480     EISSN: 19399022     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/744296     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. See, for example, Keith S. Rosenn, “The Success of Constitutionalism in the United States and Its Failure in Latin America: An Explanation,” Inter-American Law Review 22 (1990): 1-39. 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 Michael C. Taylor, “Why No Rule of Law in Mexico? Explaining the Weakness of Mexico's Judicial Branch,” New Mexico Law Review 27 (1997): 141-66. 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 French Revolution, ed. Joseph Klaits and Michael H. Haltzel (Washington and Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1994), 158-76.
3. Laboulaye's 1842 essay on Savigny can be found in Etudes contemporaines surl'Allemagne et les pays slaves, 3d ed. (Paris: Charpentier, 1868), 239-310. See also Hermann Kantorowicz, “Savigny and the Historical School of Law,” Law Quarterly Review 53 (1937): 326-43. 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 Jean Louis Eugene Lerminier, who in his Introduction generate a I'histoire du droit (Bruxelles: Hauman, 1829), 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 Donald R. Kelley, Historians and the Law in Post-Revolutionary France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
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 David Thomson, Democracy in France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1952), 59-60. The campaign produced at least two elaborate studies by jurists: Albert Desjardins, Etudes sur I'inamovibilite de la magistrature (Paris: Durand, 1880) and G. Martin-Sazeaud, Recherches historiques sur I ‘inamovibilite de la magistrature (Paris: Imprimerie et Librairie Generale de Jurisprudence, 1881).
5. John Henry Merryman, The Civil Law Tradition. An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Western Europe and Latin America, 2d ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984), 2. On the civil law tradition generally, see also essays by Mauro Cappelletti and David S. Clark in Comparative and Private International Law. Essays in Honor of John Henry Merryman on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. David S. Clark (Berlin: Dunker and Humboldt, 1990); F. H. Lawson, A Common Lawyer Looks at the Civil Law (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Law School, 1953); Mary Ann Glendon et al., Comparative Legal Traditions (St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1982).
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 John P. Dawson, The Oracles of the Law (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Law School, 1968). For the text of the decree of August 16, 1790, see John Hall Stewart, A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 143-57.
7. Merryman, Civil Law Tradition, 26-27.
8. Passages from Montesquieu (bk. 11, chap. 6), quoted by Mauro Cappelletti, The Judicial Process in Comparative Perspective (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 192-93 n.
9. Jerome B. King, “Constitutionalism and the Judiciary in France,” Political Science Quarterly 80 (1965): 69-70.
10. Rene David, French Law (Baton Rouge: Louisana State University Press, 1972), 19. 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 R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959-64), 1:57-58.
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.
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 Mauro Cappelletti, Judicial Review in the Contemporary World (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), 12-16. 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 Linda Arnold, Politica y justicia: La Suprema Corte mexicana, 1824-1855 (Mexico: UNAM, 1996).
15. Rabasa, La Constitution y la dictadura. Estudio sobre la organization politico de Mexico, 3d ed. (Mexico: Porrua, 1956), 244.
16. Daniel Cosio Villegas asserted that according to Rabasa's son Oscar, La Constitution y la dictadura was probably written in 1910 in time to present a copy to Porfirio Diaz before he left the country in May 1911. Cosio 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 Cosio Villegas, La Constitution de 1857 y sus criticos, 4th ed. (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1998; lsted. 1957), 59-60. The considerable emphasis Rabasa put on “la Conferencia Creelman y sus consecuencias,” chapter 11 of La Evolution historica de Mexico, 2d ed. (Mexico: Porrua, 1956; 1st ed., 1920), lends credence to Cosio's suggestion.
17. Rabasa, El Articulo 14: Estudio constitucional; El Juicio constitucional: Origenes, teoriay extension, 2 vols. in 1, 5th ed. (Mexico: Porrua, 1984), 133.
18. Cosio Villegas, Constitucion de 1857, 51.
19. Rabasa, Articulo 14, 69-70.
20. Rabasa, Juicio constitutional, 160, 138-39.
21. Rabasa, Constitution, 193; also Juicio constitutional, 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 Ignacio Burgoa, El Juicio de amparo, 32d rev. ed. (Mexico: Porrua, 1995; 1st ed., 1943). In English is Richard D. Baker, Judicial Review in Mexico: A Study of the Amparo Suit (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971). Contrary to the conventional view, Andres Lira Gonzalez has argued persuasively for the colonial antecedents of the juicio in El Amparo colonial v el juicio de amparo mexicano (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 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, Articulo 14, 12.
24. Rabasa, Juicio constitutional, 108, 276-79, also 319.
25. Juicio constitutional., 278. On the amparo as cassation, see Baker, Judicial Review, 175-76; Kenneth L. Karst and Keith Rosenn, Law and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 130 and following. For the numerous late nineteenth-century volumes of court reports devoted to cassation, see Helen L. Clagett and David M. Valderrama, A Revised Guide to the Law and Legal Literature of Mexico (Washington: Library of Congress, 1973), 406-13.
26. See, for example, Rabasa, Juicio constitutional, 337
27. Juicio constitutional., 329-33. For the U.S. context, see Arnold M. Paul, Conservative Crisis and the Rule of Law: Attitudes of Bar and Bench, 1887-1895 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1960); William W. Fisher III et al., eds. American Legal Realism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Morton J. Horowitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), chaps. 1-2.
28. Rabasa, Juicio constitutional, 333. In his “Brief Introduction to the Mexican Writ of Amparo,” California Western International Law Journal 9 (1979): 306-48 (designed to introduce U.S. lawyers to the juicio de amparo), Hector Fix Zamudio 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 Constitution, 188-90. On the issue in France, see David, French Law, 27.
30. See Rabasa, Juicio Constitutional, 227; Felipe Tena Ramirez, Derecho constitutional mexicano, 6th ed. rev. (Mexico: Porrua, 1963), 230, 411-12. 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: Secretarfa de Gobernacion, 1960), 2:701-22 (session of 20 Jan. 1917).
31. Rabasa, “Reforma a la constitucion polftica de la repiiblica, 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 tecnicas que la constitucion le encomienda,” Revista de ciencias sociales 5 (1928): 616-29, reprinted in Rabasa, Antologia de Emilio Rabasa, ed. Andres Serra Rojas (Mexico: Oasis, 1969), 2:188-99. 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, Antologia, 2:199-204.
32. Rabasa, “Reforma a la constitucion polftica,” in Antologia, 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 Articulo 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 Hector Fix Zamudio, “Casacion,” Diccionario juridico mexicano, 2d ed. (Mexico: Porrua, 1987), 1:428-30; also idem, “Brief Introduction,” 324, where Fix Zamudio asserts that eighty percent of amparo suits were of the cassation type.
34. See Jaime del Arenal Fenochio, “Luis Cabrera, director de la Escuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia,” Cuadernos del archivo historico de la UNAM 10 (1989); idem, “La Fundacion de la Escuela Libre de Derecho,” Revista de investigaciones juridicas, Cuaderno no. 1 (Mexico, 1988); Javier Garciadiego, “Los On'genes de la Escuela Libre de Derecho,” Revista de investigaciones juridicas 17 (1993): 199-220; idem, “Movimientos estudiantiles durante la revolucion mexicana,” in The Revolutionary Process in Mexico: Essays on Political and Social Change, 1880-1920, ed. Jaime O. Rodrfguez (Los Angeles: Latin American Center, 1990), 115-60; idem, Rudos contra cientificos. La Universidad national durante la revolucion mexicana (Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico, 1997).
35. The only evidence we have on Rabasa's teaching of the 1920s comes from student notes on his two courses “Ciencia Poh'tica” and “Derecho Constitucional Mexicano” (1928) transcribed by J. J. Gonzalez Bustamante, and published in Rabasa, Antologia, 2:339-627. The text used in political science was by the Canadian Stephen Leacock, Elements of Political Science (London: Constable, 1906), 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, Antologia, 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 Afios del estudiante Felipe Tena Ramirez en la Escuela Libre de Derecho,” Revista de investigaciones juridicas 19 (1995): 343-82. Arenal is preparing a history of the ELD.
36. Oscar Rabasa, “La Suprema corte es incompetente para conocer asuntos polfticos,” Revista juridica de la Escuela Libre de Derecho 1 (1922): 421-48. Article dated 20 September 1922.
37. “La Suprema corte es incompetente para conocer asuntos polfticos,”., 430-31.
38. Oscar Rabasa, El Derecho angloamericano. Estudio expositivo y comparado del “common law” (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1944), 16. The work was reprinted in 1982.
39. The journal Boletin del Instituto de Derecho Comparado de Mexico ran from 1948 to 1967 and has continued (to date) as Boletin Mexicano de Derecho Comparado. At least two significant comparative studies marked the Institute's twenty-fifth anniversary: Fix Zamudio, Veinticinco anos de evolucion de lajusticia constitucional, 1940-1965 (Mexico: UNAM, 1968); and Mauro Cappelletti, El Control judicial de la constitucionalidad de las leyes en el derecho comparado (Mexico: UNAM, 1966) [Eng. version as Judicial Process, above n. 8]. See also Lucio Cabrera and William Cecil Headrick, “Notas sobre lajusticia constitucional en Mexico y los Estados Unidos,” Inter-American Law Review 5 (1963): 229-76, 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 Rene David, Los Crandes Sistemas juridicos contemporaneos (Madrid: Aguilar, 1973) and John Henry Merryman, La Tradicion juridica romano-canonica (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1971), all out of print.
40. “Most distinguished,” according to Daniel Cosfo Villegas, Constitucion, 141. See also Jaime del Arenal, “Vasconcelos, Herrera y Lasso y la Escuela Libre de Derecho,” Revista de investigaciones juridicas 9 (1985): 71-102.
41. Herrera y Lasso, Estudios constitucionales (Mexico: Polis, 1940); Estudios constitucionales, 2d ser. (Mexico: Jus, 1964); Estudios politicos 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 Martinez Baez in his introduction to Herrera y Lasso, Estudios (1986).
43. The three existing statues were to Manuel Crecencio Rejon, 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 Jorge A. Sanchez-Cordero Davila, prologo to Libra del cincuentenario del cddigo civil (Mexico: UNAM, 1978), 11. Tena Ramirez's thesis entitled “La Funcion del derecho: del individualismo al socialismo” is unfortunately lost.
45. Leon Duguit, Law in the Modern State (New York: Huebsch, 1919), xxxvii and passim. English translation of Les Transformations du droit public (Paris: Armand Colin, 1913). Spanish eds. (Madrid: Beltran, 1915, 1926).
46. Tena Ramirez, Derecho constitucional, 58-65 (1st ed. [1944], 93). Cf. statement by Duguit, quoted in Charles Eisenmann, “Deux theoriciens du droit: Duguit et Hauriou,” Revue philosophique de la France et de Vetranger 110(1930): 294-95.
47. Tena Ramirez, Derecho constitucional, 442-43 (1st ed. [1944], 455-56). He cited Hauriou, Principios de derecho piiblico y constitucional (Madrid: Reis, 1927), 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 legislation sociale aux Etats-Unis; Vexperience americaine du controle judiciaire de la constitutionality des lots (Paris: Giard, 1921). 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 Edward S. Corwin, La Constitution norteamericana y su actual significado (Buenos Aires: Kraft, 1942), one of the few references to U.S. works by postrevolutionary Mexican jurists.
48. Tena Ramirez, Derecho constitutional, 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. Derecho constitutional., 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 Ramirez, would have had strong support for this position from Lambert, Gouvernement desjuges, (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 Universite de Lyon.
52. The election of Genaro David Gongora 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.