Constitution of 1857

The Constitution of 1857 is identified as the source of Mexico’s amparo, a legal remedy designed to safeguard individual rights and freedoms. Its later use by Telmex exposes a central distinction in the book’s account of institutions: a protection intended to restrain power can become a means for powerful firms to escape the equal application of law.

Constitutional Remedy and Its Purpose

The Constitution of 1857 established the historical basis for the amparo, literally an appeal for protection. In its original conception, the remedy served as a safeguard for individual rights and freedoms. It allowed a petitioner to argue that a particular law did not apply to them, placing constitutional protection between individuals and the state’s exercise of authority.

The later controversy turns on the distance between that protective purpose and the remedy’s practical effects. The constitutional origin did not ensure that amparo would function only as a defense of vulnerable individuals; its availability could also be used by powerful economic actors to resist rules meant to govern them.

Telmex and the Limits of Regulation

The book illustrates this reversal through Telmex and Carlos Slim. In 1996, the long-distance provider Avantel asked the Mexican Competition Commission to determine whether Telmex held a dominant position in telecommunications. The following year, the commission found that Telmex possessed substantial monopoly power in local telephony, national long-distance calls, and international long-distance calls, among other areas.

Regulatory efforts to limit those monopolies nevertheless came to nothing. Telmex could invoke amparo to argue that a particular law did not apply to it. A constitutional procedure grounded in individual rights thus became, in the hands of Telmex and other Mexican monopolies, a formidable instrument for consolidating market power. Rather than protecting people’s rights, the remedy operated as a loophole in equality before the law.

Law, Power, and Unequal Application

The comparison with the book’s discussion of Britain clarifies what is at stake. Rule of law means that laws should not be applied selectively or arbitrarily and that no one stands above them; it is distinct from rule by law, in which legal forms can serve those who wield power. In Britain, the account of the Black Act emphasizes that even a harsh law encountered constraints when common people retained the right to a fair trial and powerful Whig leaders could not simply dictate the outcome.

The Mexican example presents the opposite danger: a formal legal remedy can coexist with unequal practical access to protection. Amparo’s constitutional pedigree did not prevent it from helping monopolies fend off regulation. The relevant question is therefore not only what a legal safeguard promises, but who can effectively invoke it and whether it constrains powerful actors as well as protects individual rights.

Constitutional Form and Political Consequences

The book connects this gap between formal arrangements and practical limits to wider patterns of political power. In its account of Argentina, elections and popularly elected governments did not prevent presidents and political elites from overriding property rights and expropriating citizens with impunity; the absence of effective checks and pluralism mattered more than the existence of formal democratic procedures alone. The Mexican amparo example makes a related point through economic regulation: a constitutional instrument may be redirected toward protecting concentrated power rather than ensuring equal treatment.

The Constitution of 1857 therefore matters here not as a detailed account of its provisions, but as the historical origin of a remedy whose use could diverge from its stated purpose. Its example shows how institutional design and enforcement interact: rights-protecting language does not by itself secure equality when powerful firms can use legal procedures to frustrate constraints on their conduct.