1. Buffington, Robert M., Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000);Google ScholarGuerra, Elisa Speckman, Crimen y Castigo. Legislación penal, interpretaciónes de la criminalidad y administración de justicia, Ciudad de México, 1872–1910 (Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2002);Google ScholarPiccato, Pablo, City of Suspects. Crime in Mexico City, 1900–1931 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001);CrossRefGoogle Scholarsee the review of these and other recent works byReich, Peter L., “Recent Research on the Legal History of Modern Mexico,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 23 (Winter 2007): 181–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Reich, , “Recent Research on the Legal History of Modern Mexico,” 182.Google ScholarAlso seeFenochio, Jaime del Arenal, “Derecho de juristas: un tema ignorado por la historiographía jurídica Mexicana,” Revista de investigaciónes jurídicas 15 (1991): 149Google Scholar.

3. Reich, , “Recent Research on the Legal History of Modern Mexico,” 192.Google ScholarAccording to Reich, traditional legal scholarship on the judiciary has tended to be institutional in its focus. An important exception to the above, however, isHale, Charles, “The Civil Law Tradition and Constitutionalism in Twentieth-Century Mexico: The Legacy of Emilio Rabasa,” Law and History Review 18, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 257–79,CrossRefGoogle Scholaralso cited by Reich.

4. Verner, Joel G., “The Independence of Supreme Courts in Latin America: A Review of the Literature,” Journal of Latin American Studies 16 (1984): 468.CrossRefGoogle ScholarThough it has been more than twenty years since Verner's review of this literature, his argument that these generalizations simply cannot be substantiated on the basis of the extant literature remains true today. They, nonetheless, are still core assumptions of much recent work including Hale's significant contribution cited above. An important exception to the neglect of this topic since Verner's review isArnold, Linda, Politíca y justicia: La Suprema Corte Mexicana, 1824–1855, trad. Bunster, Jose Luis Soberanes Fernandez y Julian (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1996)Google Scholar.

5. Similar in content to the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Article 16 mandated, “No one shall be molested in his person, family, domicile, papers or possessions, except by virtue of an order in writing of the competent authority, setting forth the legal cause upon which the measure is taken.” Translations from the text of both constitutions have been taken fromBranch, H. M., Mexican Constitution of 1917 Compared with Constitution of 1857 (Philadelphia: The American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1917).Google ScholarAll other translations from the Spanish are mine unless otherwise specified.

6. Haber, Stephen, Razo, Armando, and Maurer, Noel, The Politics of Property Rights: Political Instability, Credible Commitments, and Economic Growth in Mexico, 1876–1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 71–75;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHerrera, María del Carmen Collado, Empresarios y Políticos, entre la Restauración y la Revolución 1920–1924 (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, 1996), 325–26;Google ScholarMiddlebrook, Kevin, The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State and Authoritarianism in Mexico (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 58.Google ScholarAn important exception remainsGruening, Ernest, Mexico and Its Heritage (New York: D. Century Co., 1928), 509Google Scholar.

7. For a succinct review of this literature, see the recent article byDomingo, Pilar, “Judicial Independence: The Politics of the Supreme Court in Mexico,” Journal of Latin American Studies 32, no. 3 (Oct. 2000): 705–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. For a survey of these relations prior to 1860, see Arnold, Politíca y justicia.

9. To mention just a few of these, Article 2 prohibited slavery, declaring that simply by entering national territory, chattel in a person was dissolved. Article 4 established the right to work in one's chosen profession, “provided it be lawful,” and reserving traditional restrictions of “police” as to be determined by the law. The right to assemble was guaranteed by Article 9, but restricted to citizens when the purpose was “taking part in the political affairs of the country,” and was denied as a right to armed assemblies. Article 13 established the equal protection of the laws, abolishing all fueros or special jurisdictions with the exception of the fuero militar (military court) and only in cases related to “military discipline.” Article 14 prohibited the retroactive application of the law and Article 27's right to property mandated that expropriation must follow a declaration of public utility and indemnity.

10. For example,Fix-Zamudio, Hector, “Ejecutivo Federal Y El Poder Judicial,” in El Sistema Presidencial Mexicano (Algunos Reflexiónes) (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1988), 273Google Scholar.

11. Oropeza, Miguel González, “El Amparo en negocios judiciales. El caso de Miguel Vega,” Anuario Mexicano de Historia del Derecho 10 (1998): 385–98.Google Scholar

12. Avelar, Miguel González, La Suprema Corte y La Política (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1979).Google Scholar

13. Hale, Charles A., The Transformation of Liberalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), chap. 4.Google Scholar

14. Lucio Cabrera, for example, suggests that the autonomy and political importance of the first revolutionary Supreme Court was equal to that of the Restored Republic and the early years of the Porfiriato (1876–1882).Cabrera, Lucio, La Suprema Corte de Justicia durante los años constitucionalistas (1917–1920) (Mexico: Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, 1995), 19Google Scholar.

15. Chief Justice Enrique de los Ríos, considered himself a revolutionary first and only secondarily a Supreme Court justice. He had been passed over by President Madero as a Supreme Court justice in 1911. Ironically, Madero preferred an old stalwart of Porfirismo, Demetrio Sodi. Justices Moreno and Urdapilleta had both fought in various military capacities for the revolution. Alberto M. González, Jose Maria Truchuelo, and Enrique Colunga, had all been members of the Jacobin wing of the Constituent Congress. The one apparent exception to a court made up of revolutionaries, then, seems to have been Justice Victoriano Pimentel who served in one minor capacity under the Victoriano Huerta government. However, it should also be noted that his appointment was backed by several prominent revolutionaries including the radical Luis Sanchez Pontón and ex-constitutional deputy, Hilario Medina. Diario de los Debates, Cámara de Diputados, Leg. XXVII, 26/5/17. Additional biographical details covering the life of Victoriano Pimentel, which do not however mention his work in the Huerta government, can be found in the Seminario Judicial de la Federación (hereafter SJF), 5, XII, p. 389.

16. On this earlier history, seeAcevedo, Lucio Cabrera, “La revolución Mexicana y la Suprema Corte de Justicia, 1910–1914,” in Diplomacia y revolución: homenaje a Berta Ulloa, ed. Staples, Anne et al. (Mexico: COLMEX, Centro de Estudios Históricos, 2000)Google Scholar.

17. One important reform to the amparo provisions related to suits filed against local judicial decisions but even this change largely confirmed pre-revolutionary practice as did other additions to Article 102, now Article 107 in the new Constitution.

18. Archivo Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, México, (herafter ASCJ) Actas, Primer Periódo, Junio 1917, Acuerdo Pleno del Día 6 de junio de 1917.

19. SJF, 5, I, p. 775, noviembre 1917.

20. Ibid.

21. SJF, 5, II, p. 772, marzo 1918.

22. Ruiz, Eduardo, Curso de Derecho Constitucional y Administrativo (Mexico: Oficina Tip. De La Secretaría de Fomento, 1888), 1:174–86.Google Scholar

23. Vallarta, Ignacio L., Cuestiones constitucionales: votos del Sr. Lic D. Ignacio L. Vallarta, edición económica (Mexico, 1894), 1:187.Google Scholar

24. Ibid.

25. See, for example, SJF, 2, X, p. 331, enero 1886; SJF, 2, X, p. 876, junio 1886; SJF 2, XIV, p. 307, febrero 1888; SJF, 2, XIV, p. 321, febrero 1888; SJF, 2, XIV, p. 350, febrero 1888; SJF, 2, XIV, p. 739, abril 1888; SJF, 3, III, p. 813, junio 1891; SJF, 4, XXVIII, p. 440, septiembre 1906. For the importance of this jurisprudence in conflicts over pueblo lands, seeKnowlton, Robert J., “Tribunales Federales y Terrenos Rurales en el Mexico del Siglo XIX: El Seminario Judicial de la Federación,” Historia Mexicana 46.1 (1996): 90,Google Scholar93, 96.

26. Indeed, these changes brought with them the first continuous elaboration of modern administrative law in Mexico according toVelasco, Gustavo R., “Derecho Administrativo,” in Evolución del Derecho Mexicano, Tomo I (México: Editorial Jus, 1943), 50Google Scholar.

27. Sentencia pronunciada por el Tercer Tribunal de Circuito en autos seguidos por la extinguida Comunidad de Villa Unión contra los denunciantes del predio ‘Siqueros’ publicada por el lic. A Yriarte (Mazatlan: Tip. Y Casa Editorial de M. Retes y Cía., 1897)Google Scholarwith reference to a sentence of August 11, 1896.

28. Diario de los Debates del Congreso Constituyente, 1916–17, 2nd ed. (México: Tallares Graficos de la Nación, 1960), 1:1040.Google Scholar

29. Laborde, Ignacio Marván, “De instituciones y caudillos: las relaciones entre la Cámara de Diputados de la XXVIII Legislatura y el presidente Carranza,” Historia Mexicana 51, no. 2 (2001): 261–323;Google ScholarWeldon, Jeffrey, “Political Sources of Presidencialismo in Mexico,” in Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America, ed. Mainwaring, Scott and Shugart, Mathew Soberg (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 225–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Dictamen de la primera comisión especial para el estudio y presentación de leyes reglamentarias que consulta una iniciativa de ley del trabajo (Mexico: Imprenta de la Cámara de Diputados, 1917), 2–3.Google Scholar

31. ASCJ, Versiónes Taquigráficas, pleno, agosto y septiembre 1918, 31 de agosto de 1918.

32. Ibid., emphasis added.

33. ASCJ, Versiónes Taquigráficas, pleno, enero y marzo 1918, 12 de enero de 1918.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid., emphasis added.

36. Both justices Truchuelo and González were members of the Constituent Congress of 1916–17.

37. Bortz, Jeffrey, “‘Without Any More Law Than Their Own Caprice’: Cotton Textile Workers and the Challenge to Factory Authority during the Mexican Revolution,” International Review of Social History 42 (1997): 256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. Ibid.

39. This is especially true for Veracruz, which has traditionally been singled out for the large number of “labor disturbances” that took place during the revolution and was one of the first to pass regulatory legislation for Article 123, which, “was in some respects more favorable to labor than was the constitution.”Clark, Marjorie Ruth, Organized Labor in Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1934), 53–54.Google ScholarAlso seeGomez, Aurora, “Impact of Revolution: Business and Labor in the Mexican Textile Industry Orizaba, Veracruz, 1900–1930,” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2000); andGoogle ScholarBortz, Jeffrey, “The Revolution, the Labour Regime and Conditions of Work in the Cotton Textile Industry in Mexico, 1910–1927,” Journal of Latin American Studies 32 (2000): 671–703CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. Carr, Barry, El Movimiento Obrero y la Politica en Mexico, 1910–1929 (Mexico: Ediciónes Era, 1981), 82–91.Google Scholar

41. This was a significant break from the “a-political” stance in electoral contests that the anarcho-sindicalist leadership of many of the early organizations had tried to maintain. For the influence of anarchism and other radical ideologies on the Mexican working class, seeHart, John M., Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860–1931 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

42. Collado, Empresarios y Políticos.

43. Basurto, Jorge, El Proletariado Industrial en Mexico (Mexico: UNAM, 1975), 221–24.Google Scholar

44. Article 123, Fraction XX.

45. Middlebrook, , The Paradox of Revolution, 62.Google Scholar

46. Bortz, Jeffrey, “Authority Re-Seated: Control Struggles in the Textile Industry during the Mexican Revolution,” Labor History 44, no. 2 (2003): 171–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47. Bortz, Jeffrey, “The Legal and Contractual Limits to Private Property Rights in Mexican Industry During the Revolution,” in The Mexican Economy, 1870–1930: Essays on the Economic History of Institutions, Revolution, and Growth, ed. Bortz, Jeffrey and Haber, Stephen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 270.Google Scholar

48. SJF, 5, III, p. 1337, diciembre 1918.

49. Middlebrook, , The Paradox of Revolution, 56.Google Scholar

50. It is important to remember that such declarations did not have erge omnes effect. For one of the first of such resolutions, see SJF, 5, II, p. 772, marzo 1918. Also for a decision against a Michoacan law, see SJF, 5, III, p. 728, septiembre 1918. However, just because they did not have erge omnes effect does not mean that they did not present a significant barrier to implementation, which concerned legislative and executive officials alike.

51. Gruening, , Mexico and Its Heritage, 365.Google Scholar

52. ASCJ, Versiónes Taquigráficas, pleno, abril II 1922, “Solicitud de la Unión Minera Mexicana.”

53. El Universal, 22 febrero 1922.

54. El Universal, 11 marzo 1922. However, the same newspaper also blamed the Congress for not passing regulatory legislation. See El Universal, 21 febrero 1922.

55. Diario de los Debates, Cámara de Diputados, Leg. XXIX, 7/10/21.

56. Cabrera, Lucio, La Suprema Corte de Justicia durante el Gobierno del Presidente Obregón (Mexico: Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, 1996), 439.Google Scholar

57. El Universal, 21 febrero 1922.

58. For a useful discussion of the importance of the new collective contracts, seeBortz, Jeffrey, “The Genesis of the Mexican Labor Relations System: Federal Labor Policy and the Textile Industry, 1925–1940,” Americas 52, no. 1 (1995): 43–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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60. Weldon, , “Political Sources of Presidencialismo in Mexico,” 231.Google Scholar

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62. ASCJ, Actas, Acuerdo Pleno, 12 de enero de 1924.

63. Ibid., 18 de enero de 1924.

64. Born in Coahuila, Ernesto Garza Pérez was a member of the state congress that had refused to recognize the Huerta government, beginning the Constitutionalist revolution of 1913. He held a cabinet post in the Carranza government as secretary of foreign relations prior to being elected to the Supreme Court. Gustavo Vicencio, president of the previous Court, also expressed reservations about recognizing the labor boards as labor tribunals.

65. Quoted inCabrera, Lucio, La Suprema Corte de Justicia durante el Gobierno del Presidente Plutarco Elías Calles (Mexico: Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación), 262Google Scholar.

66. Clark, , Organized Labor, 248–51.Google Scholar

67. Weber, Max, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, ed. Roth, Guenther and Wittich, Claus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 2:980.Google Scholar

68. “In sum, exception made for a few domestic or individual conflicts of little importance, the labor boards particularly in the states do not exist as tribunals (son tribunales inexistentes); rather it is the government that resolves these conflicts administratively.” El Problema Obrero-Patronal conferencia sustentada por el Lic. Benito Javier Perez Verdia, bajo los auspicios del Centro Patronal de Jalisco, de la Confederación Patronal de Jalisco, de la Confederación Patronal de la Rep. Mexicana (Guadalajara, Abril de 1936), 5.Google Scholar

69. The Chief Justice, for his part, had aided the escape from Mexico City of one of the more important generals implicated in the rebellion in December. SeePlasencia, , Personajes y escenarios, 221Google Scholar.

70. Indeed, the significance of precedent itself is frequently downplayed by legal scholars how of amparo in general, who choose to focus instead on legislative changes and legislative texts. Yet amparo is overwhelmingly a creature of judge-made law and judicial precedent. Moreover, much of this case law, which has come to define amparo's legal character in practice, was first established in the last third of the nineteenth century, though only rarely subjected to historical investigation.

71. Jones, H. S., The French State in Question: Public Law and Political Argument in the Third Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 15.Google Scholar

72. Flores, Antonio Carrillo, La defensa juridídica de los particulares frente a la administratión en México (México: Porrua y Hermanos y Cía., 1939).Google Scholar

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