Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/58

40 of their election, were already state or federal officeholders and by the vote of the indulgent Congress to which they had been chosen were allowed to hold both the old and the new offices at the same time.

The courts have never been a coordinate part of the government in Mexico, though that has regularly been an announced ideal. The federal judges under the old constitution were nominally elected and those of the state courts were generally chosen by the governor. In any case, the executive, state or federal, regularly controlled the selection. Since the federal executive had influence in the choice of the governors of the states, the courts from the highest to the lowest, in practice, were his own creatures.

In its treatment of the courts in the latter part of the Diaz régime the executive seems to have found itself drawn between conflicting impulses. The President was urged by certain of his advisers to make the ideal of an independent judiciary a fact and it is alleged he desired to do so. He is said to have hesitated to put property rights under the unrestricted control of the courts because of the unfortunate effects both national and international which such a step might involve. From the national point of view it was of the greatest importance that the flow of foreign capital into Mexican investments should not cease. If anti-foreign prejudice in the courts, especially the local courts, produced decisions that would discourage investment, it was argued that the economic development of the republic would be hindered. Furthermore if foreigners were denied justice, they might take their claims to their own