Law in East Florida 1783-1821

Using primary sources from the East Florida Papers, this article explores colonial legality in St. Augustine and the Province of East Florida during the second Spanish period from 1783 to 1821. In addition to discussing the promulgation of the Constitution of Cádiz and its effects, the article reaches into legal records dealing with civil and testamentary cases to explore and to describe aspects of private law in this North American Spanish colony. Economic and social relations are revealed in the sources that are rich in legal information concerning slavery, family, religion, trade, and landholding. The article concludes that the sources are worthy of more detailed study that may shed light on these topics and may establish new paths in the historiography of law in North American Spanish colonies

Rerum Novarum: New Things and Recent Paradigms of Property Law

The two most recent paradigmatic moments in the development of property law were the construction of social property about a hundred years ago and of international property quite recently. This study analyses two important texts as illustrations of these changes: Leo XIII\u27s encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) and John Sprankling\u27s book The International Law of Property (2014). Each text signals a paradigm shift in our understanding of property

Florida\u27s First Constitution

The central square of St. Augustine, Florida, the Plaza de la Constitución, is not named for the United States Constitution. Instead, its name comes from Florida’s first constitution, the Spanish Constitution of Cádiz of 1812. Daily political life in Florida’s Spanish colonial cities was governed by this document, and cities like St. Augustine ordered their activities around the requirements, rights, and duties expressed in this constitution. The Constitution of Cádiz was the first truly transatlantic constitution because it applied to the entire Spanish empire, of which St. Augustine and Pensacola were just a part. It was drafted by representatives from around the empire who gathered in the southern Spanish city of Cádiz while Spain battled against Napoleonic forces. Even before Florida became a territory of the United States, it was subject to a constitution that divided government into the three branches so familiar to us all: legislative, executive, and judicial. The Constitution of Cádiz has many modern aspects that have become important throughout the world. The constitution recognized national sovereignty, required elections at all levels of government, made the legislature the central authority in government, and set out rights for the criminally accused. Other parts of the constitution reveal a much older world. The constitution has a large section on the king and the royal family, and maintains the Roman Catholic Church as the state religion. This constitution governed Spanish Florida from 1812 to 1815 and then again from 1820 until 1821, when Spain turned Florida over to the United States. Mirow explains the importance of this document to the Spanish colonial world and to Florida. He describes some of the most interesting features of the constitution and its promulgation in St. Augustine. A fresh and authoritative translation of the entire constitution in provided along with the constitution’s original text in Spanish.https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/faculty_books/1004/thumbnail.jp

Pre-constitutional Law and Constitutions: Spanish Colonial Law and the Constitution of Cádiz

This article contributes to the intellectual and legal history of this constitutional document. It also provides a close study of how pre-constitutional laws are employed in writing constitutions. It examines the way Spanish colonial law, known as derecho indiano in Spanish, was used in the process of drafting the Constitution and particularly the way these constitutional activities and provisions related to the Americas. The article asserts that this pre-constitutional law was used in three distinct ways: as general knowledge related to the Americas and their institutions; as a source for providing a particular answer to a specific legal question; and in the debates about how grounded the Constitution is in historical sources and laws, its historicity. Although the example is drawn from Spanish colonial law and the Constitution of Cádiz, the general methodology will likely be appealing to others working in the fields of comparative constitutional law and constitutional history

Bastardy and the Statute of Wills: Interpreting a Sixteenth-Century Statute with Cases and Readings

The Statute of Wills of 1540 created a tax loophole for transfers of property to illegitimate children. Assessments for wardships that would normally be imposed on certain transfers of land to children could be effectively avoided by establishing that the donee was illegitimate, and therefore a stranger to the donor for the purposes of the statute. English lawyers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries educated their colleagues about this newly available loophole. In the inns of court, lawyers discussed the statutory provisions and recent revenue cases from the Court of Wards. This article sets out the loophole, examines how the statute created a favorable tax situation for illegitimate children of the donor, and demonstrates how the inns and the courts grappled with interpreting ambiguous statutory language

Visions of Cadiz: The Constitution of 1812 in Historical and Constitutional Thought

This chapter examines ways the Spanish Constitution of 1812, also known as the Constitution of Cddiz, has been viewed in historical and constitutional thought. The document is a liberal constitution establishing constitutional rights, a representative government, and a parliamentary monarchy. It influenced ideas of American equality within the Spanish Empire, and its traces are observed in the process of Latin American independence. To these accepted views, one must add that the Constitution was a lost moment in Latin American constitutional development. By the immediate politicization of constitutionalism after 1812, the document marks the beginning of constitutional difficulties in the region

Latin American Legal History: Some Essential Spanish Terms

Terms related to Latin American legal history translated into English

The History of the Florida Supreme Court

This article describes the challenges to writing the history of Florida\u27s colonial courts in the Spanish and British periods from 1513 to 1821. These courts are an important yet understudied aspect of Florida legal history