Foundations of Governance and Law: An Essay on Law’s Evolution in Colonial Spanish America

Abstract

The contemporary legal systems of Latin America were all established on institutional foundations that had evolved during not only the course of four centuries of Spanish and Portuguese colonial rule, but also from the fusion of pre-existing institutions formed in previous evolutionary processes. This article is an attempt first to develop an analytical framework in which such developments can be meaningfully analysed and second to identify the principal features of these prior regimes. It begins with a detailed set of propositions defining law, its basic elements and attributes as well as a theory of legal evolution. It continues with an application of this framework in the context of the Aztec and Inca civilizations, the evolution of law on the Iberian Peninsula, and finally the principal features of Spanish colonial law that ultimately emerged in the context of the Latin American colonial experience.