Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1857

The Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1857 was a liberal constitution for Mexico.

Formation

The Constitution was written by a constitutional convention in 1857 during the presidency of Ignacio Comonfort. The Convention was inaugurated on 5 February 1857.

Content

The Constitution establishes the individual rights of Mexican citizens, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and the freedom to bear arms. They reaffirmed the abolition of slavery, imprisonment for debt, cruel punishments, torture, the death penalty and largely domestic duties. She forbade titles of nobility, monopolies and hereditary offices and directed so well against a common practice of some of the oligarchy to enforce hereditary rights of the feudal system of the colonial period as well as against the system of the ejido, which inhibited trade in real estate.

Some provisions were directed against the interests of the Roman Catholic Church, as the principle of secularism. The Church's monopoly on education were discontinued as the case-law according to canon law in commercial law.

The Senate was abolished and a unicameral parliament.

Opponent

The opposition to the liberal constitution was formed in the Conservative Party.

The conflict over the Constitution polarized Mexican society and was discharged in Guerra de Reforma violent [ wp 1] and the second French intervention between liberals and conservatives.