Editing Benito Juárez (section)

===Legal career===
From the very beginning of his legal career, Juárez became an active partisan of the [[Liberal Party (Mexico)|Liberal Party]]. As a lawyer, Juárez took cases of Indigenous villagers. Community members of Loxicha, Oaxaca hired him for their denunciation of a priest, whom they accused of abuses. He did not win the case, and was thrown into jail along with community members, "thanks to the collusion between Church and the state," writing later that it "strengthened in me the goal of working constantly to destroy the pernicious power of the privileged classes."<ref>Chassen-López, ''From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca'', 252; Juárez quoted in Chassen-López, 252.</ref> Juárez gained the goal of fighting for equality before the law in the face of the lingering legal privileges that remained in Mexico from the colonial legal system, as were accorded to the Mexican Catholic Church, the army, and Indigenous communities.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sinkin |first=Richard N. |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/925061668 |title=The Mexican reform, 1855-1876 : a study in liberal nation-building |date=1979 |publisher=The University of Texas, Institute of Latin American Studies |isbn=0-292-75044-7 |location=Austin |oclc=925061668}}</ref> He became a prosecutor for the State of Oaxaca and was soon elected to the Oaxaca state legislature in 1832, serving for two years during the Liberal presidency of [[Valentin Gomez Farias]].{{sfn|Rivera Cambas|1873|p=591}}

A [[Conservative Party (Mexico)|Conservative Party]] coup led by [[Antonio López de Santa Anna|Santa Anna]] overthrew the presidency of Gomez Farias in 1834. As part of the constitutional reorganization involved in the subsequent transition from the [[First Mexican Republic]] to the [[Centralist Republic of Mexico]], Oaxaca became a department controlled by Mexico City and the state legislature of Oaxaca was dissolved. Juárez protested the dissolution of local government that was being imposed upon Oaxaca, and in fact, the rest of Mexico, as part of the transition to the [[Centralist Republic of Mexico]] in which the states of the nation were replaced by departments directly administered by Mexico City. For this, Juárez was briefly imprisoned, but he was shortly released.{{sfn|Burke|1894|p=56}} Juárez then returned to private practice.{{sfn|Rivera Cambas|1873|p=591}} After practicing law for several years. In 1842 Liberal governor of Oaxaca [[Antonio León (soldier)|Antonio León]], appointed Juárez to serve as a Civil and Revenue Judge for the state of Oaxaca, a position which he held until 1846.{{sfn|Burke|1894|p=56}}<ref>Hamnett, ''Juárez'', p. 253.</ref>