The Making of Law The Supreme Court and Labor Legislation in Mexico, 18751931 [Hardcover]

Despite Porfirio D?az's authoritarian rule (1877-1911) and the fifteen years of violent conflict typifying much of Mexican politics after 1917, law and judicial decision-making were important for the country's political and economic organization. Influenced by French theories of jurisprudence in addition to domestic events, progressive Mexican legal thinkers concluded that the liberal view of lawas existing primarily to guarantee the rights of individuals and of private propertywas inadequate for solving the social question ; the aim of the legal regime should instead be one of harmoniously regulating relations between interdependent groups of social actors. This book argues that the federal judiciary's adjudication of labor disputes and its elaboration of new legal principles played a significant part in the evolution of Mexican labor law and the nation's political and social compact. Indeed, this conclusion might seem paradoxical in a country with a civil law tradition, weak judiciary, authoritarian government, and endemic corruption. Suarez-Potts shows how and why judge-made law mattered, and why contemporaries paid close attention to the rulings of Supreme Court justices in labor cases as the nation's system of industrial relations was established.

The Making of Lawdoes more than survey the development of labor legislation and the contributions of the Mexican Supreme Court between 1875 and 1931. The author guides the reader through the historical process underscoring the court's influence in shaping social legislation. The book challenges common perceptions of Mexican history and political economy . . . The narrative is chronological but the author skillfully situates key episodes and actors in the book's larger themes . . . [T]his book's overarching conclusions are important in at least two respects. First, Suarez-Potts renders unhistoric the popular practice of coding countries as civil or common law regimes, Secondly, he contests the crude clcv