“Power without limits is a frenzy
which ruins its own authority.”
Fenelon
II. On the division of powers in Mexico until 1917
In the 1830s, new internal and external political forces and interests emerged in Mexico. On the one hand, the struggle between federalists and centralists intensified, to the point that several states considered separating from the Mexican Republic. On the other hand, various foreign pressures began to threaten the sovereignty and integrity of the national territory.
In October 1835, the General Congress erected as a Constituent Assembly promulgated the “Constitutional Bases” which, by suspending the Federal Constitution of 1824 – even though they declared that the exercise of the “supreme national power” would continue to be divided into legislative, executive and judicial, without them being able to “meet under any case or under any pretext” (art. 4) -, would establish centralism as a form of government, at the same time that the Congress erected as a Constituent Assembly would draft a new constitutional text to be promulgated in December 1836: the “Constitutional Laws of the Mexican Republic” or “The Seven Laws”. These will abolish the vice-presidential figure while establishing, in addition to the legislative, executive and judicial powers, a new power: the “Supreme Conservative Power” (Second Law) made up of five individuals, which would be charged with qualifying and nullifying any law of the legislative power and any act of the executive that were contrary to the Constitution, as well as those of the Supreme Court of Justice in which there was usurpation of functions.
However, the centralization of power ended up provoking new separatist attempts – such as the one that occurred in Texas, in addition to the latent one in Yucatan. This situation would lead the Nation to return to federalism through the promulgation in January 1843 of the “Bases of the Political Organization of the Mexican Republic”, which established the division of public power for its exercise in legislative, executive and judicial, not allowing two or more powers to be united in a single corporation or person nor to deposit the legislative in a single individual (art. 5). Government regime that would be endorsed by the Constituent Congress of 1846 when it promulgated the restoration of the Constitution of 1824 through the “Constitutive and Reform Act” in February 1847. A constitutional document of enormous value for having incorporated into the federal pact the institution of protection – originally contained in the local constitution of Yucatan thanks to Manuel Crescencio Rejón.
However, its new validity lasted barely a decade. In 1856, a new Constituent Congress was established, which published in February 1857 as its supreme document: the Political Constitution of the Mexican Republic. In the new constitutional text, its Second Title was now dedicated to national sovereignty and form of government, establishing that said national sovereignty resided “essentially and originally in the people”, with all public power emanating from the people for whose benefit it was instituted (art. 39). The people would exercise sovereignty “through the Powers of the Union in the cases within their competence, and through those of the States for what concerns their internal regime” (art. 41). Powers to whose division the Third Title will be dedicated, declaring the “supreme power of the federation” divided for its exercise into legislative, executive and judicial (art. 50) -without two or more of them being able to be united in a person or corporation, as stipulated by its predecessor-, and incorporating the existence of an assembly, called the Congress of the Union (art. 51) only composed of deputies, that is, it suppressed the bicameralism since the Senate no longer existed. In addition to this, it established that the head of the “executive of the Union” -called president of the United Mexican States (art. 75)- would be replaced in his temporary and absolute absences by the president of the Supreme Court of Justice (art. 79).
As the decades went by, after the arrival of the Porfirian regime and the outbreak of the Revolution in 1910, it was necessary to incorporate the new social demands into the supreme text. The result of reforming the Constitution of 1857 led to the promulgation of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States on February 5, 1917, which recovered bicameralism as the structural axis of legislative power, stipulating powers for the Congress in full and exclusive for each of the chambers, while transmuting the Permanent Deputation into a Permanent Commission. As for the head of the federal executive – whose powers and faculties were increased -, his indirect election was replaced by a direct one, his reelection was prohibited and the Permanent Commission and Congress were entrusted with the designation of the substitute and provisional president, respectively.
However, it was the judiciary that, from 1917 onwards, began to undergo a process of unprecedented transformation, the climax of which was reached with the constitutional and conventional reforms of the last thirty years. (To be continued)
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