The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History$ The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History, 2009
This entry contains six subentries, an overview of South and Central American law and discussion ... more This entry contains six subentries, an overview of South and Central American law and discussion of pre-colonial laws, Spanish colonial law, Portuguese colonial law, other colonial laws, and legal pluralism.
M.C. Mirow and Rafael Domingo (eds.), Routledge, 2021
This volume on Christian Jurists in Latin America examines the lives of forty key personalities i... more This volume on Christian Jurists in Latin America examines the lives of forty key personalities in Latin American legal history, in particular how their Christian faith was a factor in molding the evolution of law in their countries and the region. Each chapter discusses a jurist within his or her intellectual and political context. All chapters have been written by distinguished legal scholars and historians from Latin America and around the world. This diversity of international and methodological perspectives gives the volume its unique character; it will appeal to scholars, lawyers, and students interested in the interplay between religion and law. Many political, social, and legal historians will find, for the first time in English, authoritative treatments of the legal luminaries of the region. Latin America offers an important geographic region for scholarly attention. First, there are few authoritative works in English dealing with Latin American legal developments, institutions, and actors. This work is a significant contribution to our ability to understand the work and perspectives of jurists and their effect on legal development in individual countries and the region. Second, the region has a rich religious tradition, mostly associated Roman Catholicism, from the colonial period to the present day. Many jurists studied here took their faith seriously and appropriated their religious convictions into their work in law as teachers, scholars, and officials. Third, the individuals selected for study during the national period of Latin America’s countries exhibit wide-ranging areas of expertise from private law and codification, through national public law and constitutional law, to international developments that left their mark on the world.
St Augustine, Florida, most likely has the only surviving monument to the Constitution of Cadiz e... more St Augustine, Florida, most likely has the only surviving monument to the Constitution of Cadiz erected in the Americas. Constructed in 1813 and 1814, the monument was the most expensive public work in the city, then the capital of the Spanish province of East Florida. This chapter discusses this highly successful attempt to translate the Constitution into stone as a way of marking that city’s constitutional compliance and allegiance to the Spanish Monarchy. It addresses issues relating to the monument’s construction, projection, and unusual survival through constitutional and absolutist periods (including the origin of the Masonic square and compass on one tablet of the monument which continues as a topic of debate) and after the territory became part of the United States in 1821.
The English version of this article can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1843366Una traducci... more The English version of this article can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1843366Una traduccion de M.C. Mirow, Origenes De La Funcion Social De La Propiedad En Chile.A Spanish translation of M.C. Mirow, Origins of the Social Function of Property in Chile.
As an academic discipline within legal scholarship, law and economics—which had been largely conf... more As an academic discipline within legal scholarship, law and economics—which had been largely confined to the Anglo-American common-law world—has made considerable inroads in civil-law countries during the last decade of the twentieth century and first decade of the twenty-first century.1 Nonetheless, what has been a renewing force in legal scholarship in North America has fared less well in northwest Europe, or at least south of the Rio Grande and in southwest Europe.2 Why has the economic approach to law been so successful in the Anglo-American common-law world, and less so in European and Latin American countries rooted in civil-law tradition? This paper suggests that a divergence in attitudes toward legal science among civil-law and common-law lawyers accounts for the comparative success of law and economics in both legal systems, an idea we will expand upon throughout this study. This paper suggests that if the economic approach to law is to have an impact within the legal and s...
This chapter explores the use of military orders of the United States as foreign law in the Cuban... more This chapter explores the use of military orders of the United States as foreign law in the Cuban Supreme Court in its first two terms under United States occupation. It examines orders related to the creation of the new court and its appellate jurisdiction. Cases resolving questions of appeals within the new system of courts shed light on the court's perception of itself within the newly established structure and on its method of resolving cases under the new orders. The chapter concludes that despite being faced with seemingly foreign sources, these judges exhibited little interpretive dissonance that such possibly foreign sources might cause and employed standard interpretive tools associated with domestic sources.
This article discusses and analyzes the sources and methods used by Leon Duguit in constructing t... more This article discusses and analyzes the sources and methods used by Leon Duguit in constructing the social-obligation or social-function norm of property as set out in an influential series of lectures in Buenos Aires published in 1912. The work of Henri Hayem has been underappreciated in the development of Duguit's ideas. Hayem should be restored as a central influence on Duguit's thought and as one of the main and earliest proponents of the idea of the social-function norm. The article also examines the influence of Charmont, Comte, Durkheim, Gide, Hauriou, Landry, and Saleilles in Duguit's thought on property and its social function.
This study seeks to explore the private law side of the Constitution of Cadiz, in particular its ... more This study seeks to explore the private law side of the Constitution of Cadiz, in particular its use and reference to the legal revolution of codification that was well underway by 1812. By engaging questions of codification and private law, this study explores the relationship between private law and public law at a transformative moment in both areas. In public law, unwritten, ancient constitutions were just beginning to be replaced by written constitutions attempting to limit government and to define individual rights. In private law, centuries of the ius commune tradition were being reorganized and shaped into codes. Thus, an examination of the idea and place of codification in the Constitution of Cadiz should reveal clues about these important changes.First, this study discusses the placement of Article 258, the constitutional article referring to codes, within the text of the Constitution itself. It then addresses other aspects of the Constitution that point towards codificati...
After Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, Congress established commissioners to determine la... more After Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, Congress established commissioners to determine land ownership in the territory. A series of federal laws on this subject followed until “an act for final settlement of land-claims in Florida” in 1830. From 1827 to 1926, the United States Supreme Court was the final arbiter in more than sixty cases of titles to land in Florida. While the Court often relied on the determinations of commissioners and on the decisions of lower federal courts, such as the territorial Superior Court of East Florida, many cases required the Court to examine Spanish colonial law, derecho indiano, to decide questions of title to land. The stakes were high; disputed grants often exceeded 10,000 acres. This study focuses on the way the Supreme Court dealt with Spanish colonial law to decide these cases. It examines the Court’s sources, skill, limitations, and biases when addressing complex issues of land title under a foreign legal system. Justices Trimble, Marsh...
The article explores the vibrant constitutional community that existed in St. Augustine and the p... more The article explores the vibrant constitutional community that existed in St. Augustine and the province of East Florida in the final decade of Spanish control of the area. Based on relatively unexplored primary sources, it reveals a great deal of unknown information about the importance of the Constitution in Florida immediately before the territory was transferred to the United States. The article provides full description of the Constitution's promulgation in 1812 and a second promulgation of the Constitution in 1820 (something unknown in the general literature). It also addresses the construction of the St. Augustine monument to the Constitution erected in 1813 and standing today in the central square of the city. It concludes with the novel claim that when Spain transferred the territory to the United States in 1821, the territory moved from one constitutional regime, under the Constitution of Cadiz, to another, under the Constitution of Philadelphia. This article presents ...
The authors adopt the genre of the obituary to discuss the development and present condition of t... more The authors adopt the genre of the obituary to discuss the development and present condition of the Federal Estate Tax. Using this form of descriptive narrative, the authors present a concise summary of the most important changes in the tax over the past eighty-five years.
This chapter seeks to provide new insights into the promulgation and effect of the Constitution o... more This chapter seeks to provide new insights into the promulgation and effect of the Constitution of Cadiz in Cuba and Florida. While Havana and St. Augustine were both part of Spain’s expansive Caribbean colonies, St. Augustine was militarily, politically, and economically dependent on Cuba during the early nineteenth century. The two locales were socially quite different: Havana was wealthy, closely tied to the peninsula, and replicated the common aspects of Spanish colonial society. By the early decades of the nineteenth century, St. Augustine outside its fort, the Castillo de San Marcos, was poor, sparsely populated, and socially mixed. This lack of resources and personnel led St. Augustine to modify or to improvise when complying with the Constitution. Despite these accommodations, St. Augustine was quite careful to carry out the legal requirements of the Constitution and to establish and to use the required constitutional institutions and procedures. The Floridanos of St. August...
This article examines the role of religion and the Vatican in resolving the Beagle Channel disput... more This article examines the role of religion and the Vatican in resolving the Beagle Channel dispute between Argentina and Chile in the late 1970s.
Discusses the means available to property owners in England between approximately 1500 and 1800 t... more Discusses the means available to property owners in England between approximately 1500 and 1800 to control the disposition of their property upon death. Addresses intestacy, objects of the last will and testament, the will in the courts, requirements of wills, revocation, executors, who could make a testament, and restrictions on who may take property.
The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History$ The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History, 2009
This entry contains six subentries, an overview of South and Central American law and discussion ... more This entry contains six subentries, an overview of South and Central American law and discussion of pre-colonial laws, Spanish colonial law, Portuguese colonial law, other colonial laws, and legal pluralism.
M.C. Mirow and Rafael Domingo (eds.), Routledge, 2021
This volume on Christian Jurists in Latin America examines the lives of forty key personalities i... more This volume on Christian Jurists in Latin America examines the lives of forty key personalities in Latin American legal history, in particular how their Christian faith was a factor in molding the evolution of law in their countries and the region. Each chapter discusses a jurist within his or her intellectual and political context. All chapters have been written by distinguished legal scholars and historians from Latin America and around the world. This diversity of international and methodological perspectives gives the volume its unique character; it will appeal to scholars, lawyers, and students interested in the interplay between religion and law. Many political, social, and legal historians will find, for the first time in English, authoritative treatments of the legal luminaries of the region. Latin America offers an important geographic region for scholarly attention. First, there are few authoritative works in English dealing with Latin American legal developments, institutions, and actors. This work is a significant contribution to our ability to understand the work and perspectives of jurists and their effect on legal development in individual countries and the region. Second, the region has a rich religious tradition, mostly associated Roman Catholicism, from the colonial period to the present day. Many jurists studied here took their faith seriously and appropriated their religious convictions into their work in law as teachers, scholars, and officials. Third, the individuals selected for study during the national period of Latin America’s countries exhibit wide-ranging areas of expertise from private law and codification, through national public law and constitutional law, to international developments that left their mark on the world.
St Augustine, Florida, most likely has the only surviving monument to the Constitution of Cadiz e... more St Augustine, Florida, most likely has the only surviving monument to the Constitution of Cadiz erected in the Americas. Constructed in 1813 and 1814, the monument was the most expensive public work in the city, then the capital of the Spanish province of East Florida. This chapter discusses this highly successful attempt to translate the Constitution into stone as a way of marking that city’s constitutional compliance and allegiance to the Spanish Monarchy. It addresses issues relating to the monument’s construction, projection, and unusual survival through constitutional and absolutist periods (including the origin of the Masonic square and compass on one tablet of the monument which continues as a topic of debate) and after the territory became part of the United States in 1821.
The English version of this article can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1843366Una traducci... more The English version of this article can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1843366Una traduccion de M.C. Mirow, Origenes De La Funcion Social De La Propiedad En Chile.A Spanish translation of M.C. Mirow, Origins of the Social Function of Property in Chile.
As an academic discipline within legal scholarship, law and economics—which had been largely conf... more As an academic discipline within legal scholarship, law and economics—which had been largely confined to the Anglo-American common-law world—has made considerable inroads in civil-law countries during the last decade of the twentieth century and first decade of the twenty-first century.1 Nonetheless, what has been a renewing force in legal scholarship in North America has fared less well in northwest Europe, or at least south of the Rio Grande and in southwest Europe.2 Why has the economic approach to law been so successful in the Anglo-American common-law world, and less so in European and Latin American countries rooted in civil-law tradition? This paper suggests that a divergence in attitudes toward legal science among civil-law and common-law lawyers accounts for the comparative success of law and economics in both legal systems, an idea we will expand upon throughout this study. This paper suggests that if the economic approach to law is to have an impact within the legal and s...
This chapter explores the use of military orders of the United States as foreign law in the Cuban... more This chapter explores the use of military orders of the United States as foreign law in the Cuban Supreme Court in its first two terms under United States occupation. It examines orders related to the creation of the new court and its appellate jurisdiction. Cases resolving questions of appeals within the new system of courts shed light on the court's perception of itself within the newly established structure and on its method of resolving cases under the new orders. The chapter concludes that despite being faced with seemingly foreign sources, these judges exhibited little interpretive dissonance that such possibly foreign sources might cause and employed standard interpretive tools associated with domestic sources.
This article discusses and analyzes the sources and methods used by Leon Duguit in constructing t... more This article discusses and analyzes the sources and methods used by Leon Duguit in constructing the social-obligation or social-function norm of property as set out in an influential series of lectures in Buenos Aires published in 1912. The work of Henri Hayem has been underappreciated in the development of Duguit's ideas. Hayem should be restored as a central influence on Duguit's thought and as one of the main and earliest proponents of the idea of the social-function norm. The article also examines the influence of Charmont, Comte, Durkheim, Gide, Hauriou, Landry, and Saleilles in Duguit's thought on property and its social function.
This study seeks to explore the private law side of the Constitution of Cadiz, in particular its ... more This study seeks to explore the private law side of the Constitution of Cadiz, in particular its use and reference to the legal revolution of codification that was well underway by 1812. By engaging questions of codification and private law, this study explores the relationship between private law and public law at a transformative moment in both areas. In public law, unwritten, ancient constitutions were just beginning to be replaced by written constitutions attempting to limit government and to define individual rights. In private law, centuries of the ius commune tradition were being reorganized and shaped into codes. Thus, an examination of the idea and place of codification in the Constitution of Cadiz should reveal clues about these important changes.First, this study discusses the placement of Article 258, the constitutional article referring to codes, within the text of the Constitution itself. It then addresses other aspects of the Constitution that point towards codificati...
After Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, Congress established commissioners to determine la... more After Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, Congress established commissioners to determine land ownership in the territory. A series of federal laws on this subject followed until “an act for final settlement of land-claims in Florida” in 1830. From 1827 to 1926, the United States Supreme Court was the final arbiter in more than sixty cases of titles to land in Florida. While the Court often relied on the determinations of commissioners and on the decisions of lower federal courts, such as the territorial Superior Court of East Florida, many cases required the Court to examine Spanish colonial law, derecho indiano, to decide questions of title to land. The stakes were high; disputed grants often exceeded 10,000 acres. This study focuses on the way the Supreme Court dealt with Spanish colonial law to decide these cases. It examines the Court’s sources, skill, limitations, and biases when addressing complex issues of land title under a foreign legal system. Justices Trimble, Marsh...
The article explores the vibrant constitutional community that existed in St. Augustine and the p... more The article explores the vibrant constitutional community that existed in St. Augustine and the province of East Florida in the final decade of Spanish control of the area. Based on relatively unexplored primary sources, it reveals a great deal of unknown information about the importance of the Constitution in Florida immediately before the territory was transferred to the United States. The article provides full description of the Constitution's promulgation in 1812 and a second promulgation of the Constitution in 1820 (something unknown in the general literature). It also addresses the construction of the St. Augustine monument to the Constitution erected in 1813 and standing today in the central square of the city. It concludes with the novel claim that when Spain transferred the territory to the United States in 1821, the territory moved from one constitutional regime, under the Constitution of Cadiz, to another, under the Constitution of Philadelphia. This article presents ...
The authors adopt the genre of the obituary to discuss the development and present condition of t... more The authors adopt the genre of the obituary to discuss the development and present condition of the Federal Estate Tax. Using this form of descriptive narrative, the authors present a concise summary of the most important changes in the tax over the past eighty-five years.
This chapter seeks to provide new insights into the promulgation and effect of the Constitution o... more This chapter seeks to provide new insights into the promulgation and effect of the Constitution of Cadiz in Cuba and Florida. While Havana and St. Augustine were both part of Spain’s expansive Caribbean colonies, St. Augustine was militarily, politically, and economically dependent on Cuba during the early nineteenth century. The two locales were socially quite different: Havana was wealthy, closely tied to the peninsula, and replicated the common aspects of Spanish colonial society. By the early decades of the nineteenth century, St. Augustine outside its fort, the Castillo de San Marcos, was poor, sparsely populated, and socially mixed. This lack of resources and personnel led St. Augustine to modify or to improvise when complying with the Constitution. Despite these accommodations, St. Augustine was quite careful to carry out the legal requirements of the Constitution and to establish and to use the required constitutional institutions and procedures. The Floridanos of St. August...
This article examines the role of religion and the Vatican in resolving the Beagle Channel disput... more This article examines the role of religion and the Vatican in resolving the Beagle Channel dispute between Argentina and Chile in the late 1970s.
Discusses the means available to property owners in England between approximately 1500 and 1800 t... more Discusses the means available to property owners in England between approximately 1500 and 1800 to control the disposition of their property upon death. Addresses intestacy, objects of the last will and testament, the will in the courts, requirements of wills, revocation, executors, who could make a testament, and restrictions on who may take property.
Spanish Abstract: Un estudio de las causas civiles en la Florida Oriental, 1785-1821. English Abs... more Spanish Abstract: Un estudio de las causas civiles en la Florida Oriental, 1785-1821. English Abstract: A study of civil litigation in the Spanish province of East Florida from 1785 to 1821.
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Books by Matthew Mirow
Books by Matthew Mirow
Latin America offers an important geographic region for scholarly attention. First, there are few authoritative works in English dealing with Latin American legal developments, institutions, and actors. This work is a significant contribution to our ability to understand the work and perspectives of jurists and their effect on legal development in individual countries and the region. Second, the region has a rich religious tradition, mostly associated Roman Catholicism, from the colonial period to the present day. Many jurists studied here took their faith seriously and appropriated their religious convictions into their work in law as teachers, scholars, and officials. Third, the individuals selected for study during the national period of Latin America’s countries exhibit wide-ranging areas of expertise from private law and codification, through national public law and constitutional law, to international developments that left their mark on the world.
Papers by Matthew Mirow
Latin America offers an important geographic region for scholarly attention. First, there are few authoritative works in English dealing with Latin American legal developments, institutions, and actors. This work is a significant contribution to our ability to understand the work and perspectives of jurists and their effect on legal development in individual countries and the region. Second, the region has a rich religious tradition, mostly associated Roman Catholicism, from the colonial period to the present day. Many jurists studied here took their faith seriously and appropriated their religious convictions into their work in law as teachers, scholars, and officials. Third, the individuals selected for study during the national period of Latin America’s countries exhibit wide-ranging areas of expertise from private law and codification, through national public law and constitutional law, to international developments that left their mark on the world.