Essay by Robert J. Cottrol
This Essay examines three books that bring us closer to the integration of Latin-American legal history with the broader political and social history of the region. The three books, O fiador dos brasileiros: Cidadania, escravidão e direito civil no tempo de Antonio Pereira Rebouças, Measures of Equality: Social Science, Citizenship, and Race in Cuba, 1902-1940, and Drowning in Laws: Labor Law and Brazilian Political Culture represent the newer effort by historians and social scientists concerned with Latin America to integrate legal and social history. This kind of historical sociology of law uses law and its history not merely to illustrate the evolution of legal doctrine; it uses the law as a window into the civilization being studied. This approach, I argue, is an especially important one to bring to the study of legal history in Latin America. The juncture of often clashing societal interests that law is meant to mediate is often joined by a fragmented legal culture, lawyers representing different factions and interests, combined with frequently conflicting internal demands from within the legal system. In Brazil, and indeed other parts of Latin America, this combination has helped to produce a kind of normative nominalism where egalitarian norms have become enshrined in constitutions and statutes but have proven elusive in application. The three books have explored these complexities and lead to a better understanding of Latin-American law and legal history.
About the Author
Robert J. Cottrol. Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law and Professor of History and Sociology, The George Washington University.
Citation
81 Tul. L. Rev. 889 (2007)