Who Wrote the Complete Treatise? Plagiarism, Codification, and Treatise Writing in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexico

This paper focuses on a bitter polemic that took place between a Mexican treatise writer, Jacinto Pallares, and his former teacher and colleague at the National School of Jurisprudence, Blas José Gutiérrez, over the publication of Pallares’s The Judicial Power Or Complete Treatise of the Organization, Jurisdiction and Procedures of the Tribunals of the Mexican Republic (1874). It led to an accusation of plagiarism by Pallares’ former teacher who alleged that Pallares had taken liberties with his class notes. Besides its intrinsic interest, involving as it does the work of a well-known jurist, this paper argues that the debate between Pallares and Gutiérrez, publicized by the leading journals of the day, but largely ignored by scholars, also provides a window on the incomplete nature of Mexican code law, even after the codifications of the early 1870s. It also highlights the aporias that existed between the legal theories that guided codification and actual legal practice.