The 1917 Constitution of Mexico is the present constitution of Mexico.
Mexico has had three fully-fledged, operational constitutions: those enacted in 1824, 1857, and 1917 (see below). The 1917 Constitution was drafted in Santiago de Querétaro during the Mexican Revolution. It was approved by the Constitutional Congress on February 5, 1917, with Venustiano Carranza serving as the first president under its terms.
The Día de la Constitución (Constitution Day) on February 5 is one of Mexico's annual Fiestas Patrias or public holidays, commemorating the promulgation of the Constitution.
Articles of the Constitution
Most of the original articles are still in force but have been heavily amended.
Among the most frequently cited articles of the Constitution are Articles 3, 27, 123 and 130.
Article 3 covers the matter of education in Mexico, and its main principle is that all of the education given by the state is to be free and nonreligious.
Article 27 states that all of the land in the country is originally the property of the nation, which can grant control over it to private citizens, albeit with certain restrictions – for instance, foreign citizens cannot own land within 100 km of the borders or 50 km of the sea, that an area of land next to the coast is federal property which cannot be sold to particulars, and that only the nation may control, extract, and process petroleum and its derivatives.
Article 127 covers the rights of workers, including the eight-hour work day, the right to strike, the right to a day's rest per week, and the right to a proper indemnization following unjustified termination of the working relationship by the employer.
Article 130 states that Church and State are to remain separated. It provides for the obligatory state registration of all "churches and religious groupings" and places a series of restrictions on priests and ministers of all religions (ineligible to hold public office, to canvas on behalf of political parties or candidates, to inherit from persons other than close blood relatives, etc.).
The Article 18 crisis
From the perspective of legal scholars outside Mexico (especially those in the USA), the most troubling aspect of the current 1917 Constitution is Article 18, which covers the rights of the accused and the guilty. The problem with Article 18 is that it recognizes only "social readaptation" (what most people would call rehabilitation) as the primary goal of incarceration. This limited view of incarceration (which Mexico happens to share with most European countries) fails to recognize that according to thinking prevalent in the USA, there may be other sensible reasons for incarcerating criminals, such as retribution, deterrence and segregation from the general population.
The reason Article 18 has become an object of concern outside of Mexico is that the Supreme Court ruled in October 2001 that life imprisonment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment within the meaning of Article 22, partially because it fails to allow for the possibility of rehabilitation as required by Article 18. In turn, Mexico will not allow criminal suspects to be extradited unless the receiving country can guarantee that the defendant will not receive a life sentence. But that can be difficult, since most U.S. states provide for life sentences for the felonies for which they will go to the trouble of pursuing extradition proceedings. The effective legal result of the Supreme Court's ruling is that people can commit heinous crimes in their home countries and flee to Mexico and escape the long arm of the law.
The concrete effects of the ruling are already evident; over 70% of the outstanding felony warrants in California today are for fugitives thought to be in Mexico.
See also
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