On justice and 'home rule' tradition in the Spanish colonial order. Criminal justice and self government in Córdoba del Tucumán

ALEJANDRO AGÜERO

Quaderni Fiorentini Per la Storia del Pensiero Giuridico Moderno

Giuffrè

Lugar: Milano ; Año: 2012 p. 173 - 221

0392-1867

As the Spanish criminal justice system has been considered as an institutional area that would have been "almost entirely under direct royal control throughout the early modern period", trough the analysis of colonial criminal justice I expect to show that the approach based on the Absolute State image of the Spanish Monarchy has conditioned our understanding about this point, since it has often put aside the completely different conception of the Law and Justice held by the Spanish legal culture of the modern ages. I try to show the practical implications of that different cultural conception in the administration of criminal justice and in its local adaptation. As a first conclusion, I suggest that an effect of "localization" of the law and justice was a common pattern of the Spanish legal culture of the modern ages. If this made it possible to adapt the substantive law to any particular context, it also affected the standards of the institutional structure. According to this, I try to show how in a peripheral colonial context, like in Córdoba del Tucumán, the King´s justice remained almost under local control and fed a home rule tradition that would have left its imprints on the postcolonial time.