| Sumario: | This essay analyzes the primary motives for the suppression of clerical privileges in 1855, taking into account not just the ideological debate over the incompatibility of clerical privileges with the principle of equality before the law, but also the experience of jurisdictional privileges during the first half of the 19th Century. The central premise of this analysis is that the attack on clerical privileges must be analyzed in its original context – that is, as part of a reform that sought to create the basic conditions for the exercise of public authority in the jurisdictional realm. By showing the different ways in which clerical privileges had become an obstacle to the speedy and effective administration of justice, this article concludes that the suppression of clerical privileges was an urgently needed response to problems inherited from the colonial order and to this extent was therefore a solution to the problem of the weakness, inefficiency and limited legitimacy of the young Mexican state.
|
|---|
