Constitutional Congress Research Articles

Church-State Relations and the Mexican Constitutional Congress, 1916-1917

One of most bitter and recurrent issues in history of independent Mexico has been relationship between church and state. Independence was achieved in a manner that left question of desirable form of relations between church and state a point of bitter dispute between liberals and conservatives. At stake in this dispute were not only eco nomic power and privilege of Roman Catholic Church and its functionaries but also antagonistic notions of type of society which Mexico should become, that is, a variant of a feudal society or a modernizing capitalist republican society. It would not be too much to suggest that this fundamental cleavage within political, economic, and clerical elites was a, if not the, key factor in political instability of Mexico from independence until coming of regime of Porfirio Diaz in 1870s. It is not purpose of this study to review vast literature on church-state conflict during first half century of Mexican independence. Rather its purpose is to comment on conflict's explosive resurgence during Revolution of 1910-1917. The definitive triumph of liberals expressed by Consti tution of 1857 and then regained in bitter and protracted War of French Intervention represented a great setback for church power and a significant victory for liberal conception of church-state relations. The politics of conciliation carried out by Diaz halted attempts to continue to roll back church power but did not restore church to its previous position. The Revolution of 1910-1917 did not start with anticlericalism as a significant issue. However, it did emerge as a salient issue for triumphant coalition in Revolution, Constitu tionalists, but not for Zapatista-Villista alliance, which has come to be known as the convention. After split in convention of Aguas Calientes in 1914, itself a last attempt to

Political Democracy and the Mexican Constitutionalists: A Re-Examination

The Mexican Constitutional Congress of 1916-1917 represents in many respects a culmination of the struggle begun before 1910 against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. The Constitutional Congress was not only a culmination of the violent phase of the Mexican Revolution. It also involved a codification, if not a crystallization, of goals and perspectives that either pre-date 1910 or emerged during the struggles of 1910-1917. These struggles involved competing mobilizations within the Revolutionary coalition and, finally, a civil war within the Revolution between the forces of the Convention (the unstable coalition between the Zapatistas and the Villistas) and those of the Constitutionalists. The Constitutional Congress takes place after the military victory of the Constitutionalists and delegate eligibility was restricted to those who had actively supported the Constitutionalists. The radical economic nationalism and other innovative features of the Constitution have captured the attention of commentators. While the interpretation of the economic nationalism and other features remains the subject of considerable dispute, the notion that the Constitutionalists had a democratizing thrust in the political realm has remained unchallenged. Our analysis of both the articles and, more importantly, the debates at the Constitutional Congress leads us to challenge the premise of a democratizing impulse. This is not to say that the Constitutionalist delegates were for dictatorship, but it is to suggest that compared to the Constitution of 1857, the Constitutionalists do not emerge as radical democrats but as elitists that are fearful of mass participation as well as fearful of the possibility of a new dictatorship. We will examine the debates on four issues for this purpose: (A) suffrage; (B) literacy requirements to serve as a Deputy (member of Congress); (C) directness of electing officials; (D) no re-election.

Reforming Soviet Criminal Law

Declaring that there is to be a new federal criminal code for the entire Soviet Union to replace the various codes formerly existing in each Republic, the Stalin Constitution' opened a new vista for Soviet criminal law. No one imagined at the time of the Constitutional Congress that within less than two months the man who had been designated to draft this new code would be declared an enemy of the people and berated for the ideas he had been teaching as to the nature and function of criminal law. Still less did any one think that within a year the man who had been appointed the first Commissar of the newly formed All-Union Commissariat of Justice would also go the way of an enemy. The repudiation of Commissar Krylenko during January and February of 1938 has served to re-emphasize the importance of the earlier repudiation of E. B. Pashukanis. Both names had for the past decade been on the lips of every student of Soviet criminal law -respect in some cases developing into reverence as when one of Pashukanis' disciples termed his master's ideas the only correct Marxian theories of law.2

The History of the Department of State: VII

Having considered in former numbers of this Journal the sometime and occasional duties of the Department, including among them certain contingent duties which it has never been called upon to perform, we may now advance to a consideration of its habitual functions.The organic act of the Department prescribed that the Secretary of State should keep “ the seal of the United States.” It is the mark of the supreme authority of the United States, and before the government went into operation under the Constitution, was in the custody of the Secretary of Congress, being used to verify all important acts, whether executive or legislative; but the debate on executive departments in the first constitutional congress indicated that Congress did not contemplate keeping the seal any longer, and thought it would necessarily pass to the custody of the Executive. The President did, in fact, take it under his control as soon as he assumed office and before legal provision had been made for it.