Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:16:10.051Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Legal Reasoning in a Slave Society (Brazil, 1860–88)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2018

Pedro Jimenez Cantisano  and
Mariana Armond Dias Paes
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article analyses arguments used in an 1866 Brazilian freedom suit to highlight a substantive legal perspective. Historians of Brazilian slavery law have given attention to the politics of freedom suits, largely disregarding the role of law in their origins, developments, and outcomes. By looking at legal arguments, we show how law and political views mutually framed each other. We focus on the impact of 19th century legal modernizations in the distinction and contradictions between the law of status and property law, the legal translations of freedom, and the uses of arguments based on codes, natural law, and pragmatic considerations about the judiciary's role in a slave society. This is a micro-history of a suit that, with the help of other 19th-century freedom suits and legal doctrine, allows us to move up and down different historical scales to understand law's centrality in the political perpetuation and demise of slavery in Brazil.

Type
Original Article
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , August 2018 , pp. 471 - 510
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Her research interests are the legal history of slavery and property law. Her recent book “Sujeitos da história, sujeitos de direitos” (Alameda, 2018) focuses on the regulation of slaves' legal statuses in Brazil, from 1860 to 1888. She is currently working on a project about property law and regimes of dependence in the Lusophone South Atlantic territories (nowadays Brazil and Angola), from circa 1780 to circa 1880.

References

1. Bicalho, Honorio, Carta do Imperio do Brazil: indicando um plano geral para base da rede de viação (Rio de Janeiro: Lith. Paulo Robin, 1882)Google Scholar. 54.5 × 45.8 cm. http://objdigital.bn.br/objdigital2/acervo_digital/div_cartografia/cart230727/cart230727.html (November 5, 2017). Joaquim Miguel Ribeiro Lisboa, Mappa da província de São Paulo: Organisado no Escriptorio Tecnico da Companhia Mogyana sob a direcção do engenheiro em chefe (Rio de Janeiro: Lith. Paulo Robin, 1884). 51.5 × 66.5 cm. http://objdigital.bn.br/objdigital2/acervo_digital/div_cartografia/cart515157/cart515157.htm (November 5, 2017).

2. The complete reference for the trial records is Apelada: Benta, Número: 12.245, Caixa: 3686, Série: Apelação Cível, Fundo/Coleção: Relação do Rio de Janeiro, Microfilme: AN 076-2006, Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Here, we use the reference code 84.ACI.0133. When a page was divided in two, reference is made to “L” for left side or “R” for right side.

3. According to Jacques Revel, the microhistorical approach “is based on the principle that the choice of a particular scale of observation produces certain effects of understanding that are useful in conjunction with strategies of understanding” (Revel, Jacques, “Microanalysis and the Construction of the Social,” in Histories: French Constructions of the Past, ed. Revel, Jacques and Hunt, Lynn (New York: The New Press, 1995), 495Google Scholar.

4. de Luné, Antonio José Baptista and da Fonseca, Paulo Delfino, eds., Almanak Provincia de São Paulo para 1873 (São Paulo: Typographia Americana, 1873), 408Google Scholar.

5. Lisboa, Joaquim Miguel Ribeiro, Mappa da província de São Paulo: Organisado no Escriptorio Tecnico da Companhia Mogyana sob a direcção do engenheiro em chefe (Rio de Janeiro: Lith. Paulo Robin, 1884)Google Scholar. 51.5 × 66.5 cm. http://objdigital.bn.br/objdigital2/acervo_digital/div_cartografia/cart515157/cart515157.htm (November 5, 2017).

6. Tomich, Dale, Through the Prism of Slavery. Labor, Capital, and World Economy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004)Google Scholar; Tomich, Dale and Marquese, Rafael, “O Vale do Paraíba escravista e a formação do mercado mundial do café no século XIX,” in O Brasil Imperial, v. 2, ed. Grinberg, Keila and Salles, Ricardo (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2009): 341–83Google Scholar.

7. de Luné and da Fonseca, Almanak Provincia, 172–73.

8. Chalhoub, Sidney, A Força da Escravidão: Ilegalidade e Costume no Brasil Oitocentista (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2012)Google Scholar; and Mamigonian, Beatriz Gallotti, Africanos Livres: A Abolição do Tráfico de Escravos no Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2017)Google Scholar.

9. Chalhoub, Sidney, Visões da Liberdade: Uma História Das Últimas Décadas da Escravidão na Corte (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1990)Google Scholar; de Castro, Hebe Maria Mattos, Das cores do silêncio: os significados da liberdade no sudeste escravista – Brasil séc. XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional, 1995)Google Scholar; and Grinberg, Keila, Liberata: A Lei da Ambigüidade (Rio de Janeiro: CEPS, 2008)Google Scholar.

10. Law schools were part of Emperor D. Pedro I's project of producing a bureaucratic and political class for the emerging Brazilian state. The São Paulo Law School and the Olinda Law School, in the province of Pernambuco, were founded in 1827. In 1854, the Olinda Law School was transferred to the city of Recife, also in Pernambuco. Filho, Alberto Venâncio, Das Arcadas ao Bacharelismo (150 Anos de Ensino Jurídico no Brasil) (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1982)Google Scholar.

11. Fernandes, Florestan, A Revolução Burguesa no Brasil: Ensaio de Interpretação Sociológica (São Paulo: Globo, 2006), 56–57Google Scholar; and Parron, Tâmis, A Política da Escravidão no Império do Brasil, 1826–1865 (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2011)Google Scholar.

12. Articles 179 and 152 of the Political Constitution of the Empire of Brazil, 1824 (Constituição Política do Império do Brazil, 1824). We refer to this document as the 1824 Constitution.

13. According to Robert Gordon, “relative autonomy means that they [legal forms and practices] cannot be explained completely by reference to external political, social, and economic factors. To some extent they are independent variables in social experience and therefore they require study elaborating their peculiar internal structures with the aim of finding out how those structures feed back upon social life” (Robert W. Gordon, “Critical Legal Histories,” Stanford Law Review 36:57 [1984]: 101). On the role of the rule of law on conflicts between social groups, see also Thompson, Edward Palmer, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), 258–69Google Scholar.

14. On the usage of “translation” in Legal History, see Duve, Thomas, “European Legal History: Concepts, Methods, Challenges,” in Entanglements in Legal History: Conceptual Approaches, ed. Duve, Thomas (Frankfurt am Main: Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte, 2014), 3Google Scholar.

15. Keila Grinberg corroborates this view, emphasizing that even the most politicized lawyers had to work within the space of previously established juridical rules in order to win cases. Grinberg, Keila, O Fiador dos Brasileiros: Cidadania, Escravidão e Direito Civil no Tempo de Antonio Pereira Rebouças (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2002), 251–52Google Scholar, 258–59.

16. Mattos, Das cores do silêncio, 208. Mattos credits the increasing number of freedom suits registered after 1850 to the increasing participation of rural slaves in judicial contests. After 1871, freedom suits became summary proceedings, thus reducing the number of cases that reached Rio de Janeiro's court of appeals. Grinberg, on the other hand, credits that increase to a broader process of delegitimation of certain practices in the slave system. Grinberg, Keila, “Re-enslavement, Rights and Justice in Nineteenth Century Brazil,” Translating the Americas 1 (2013): 141CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Freedom suits were already relatively common across the eighteenth-century Portuguese empire. See Fernanda Pinheiro, “Em defesa da liberdade: libertos e livres de cor nos tribunais do Antigo Regime português” (PhD diss., State University of Campinas, 2013).

17. According to some Brazilian jurists, slaves had standing in lawsuits concerning their marriages, in lawsuits regarding their legal status, and when there was a clear “public interest.” Malheiro, Agostinho Marques Perdigão, A Escravidão no Brasil: Ensaio Histórico, Jurídico, Social (published in 1866; reprint edition: Petrópolis: Vozes, 1976)Google Scholar, 1:67; and Ribas, Antonio Joaquim, Direito Administrativo Brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: F. L. & Pinto C. Livreiros-Editores, 1866), 373–74Google Scholar. Other jurists considered that slaves had standing only in lawsuits concerning their legal status. de Moraes Carvalho, Alberto Antonio, Praxe forense (Rio de Janeiro: Eduardo e Henrique Laemmert, 1850), 1:72–73Google Scholar; de Freitas, Augusto Teixeira, Consolidação das Leis Civis (Rio de Janeiro: B. L. Garnier, 1876), 24Google Scholar; de Freitas, Augusto Teixeira, Primeiras Linhas sobre o Processo Civil (Rio de Janeiro: Tipografia Perseverança, 1879), 1:45Google Scholar; and de Souza Pinto, José Maria Frederico, Primeiras Linhas sobre o Processo Civil Brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Eduardo e Henrique Laemmert, 1875)Google Scholar, 1:36, 45.

18. Married women needed their husband's authorization. Carvalho, Praxe Forense, 1:58–65; Pinto, Primeiras Linhas (1875), 13:6.

19. In some Spanish colonies, the abogado de pobres represented slaves and indigenous people, who were considered “impoverished persons” (personas miserables) in need of “protection.” See de Barry, Ana María Zapata, El Defensor de Pobre como Defensor de Esclavos, 1722–1839 (Bahia Blanca: Ediuns, 2013)Google Scholar; and Duve, Thomas, “La condición jurídica del indio y su consideración como persona miserabilis en el Derecho indiano,” in Un Giudice e Due Leggi: Pluralismo Normativo e Conflitti Agrari in Sud America, ed. Losano, Mario (Milano: Giuffrè, 2004)Google Scholar. In Cuba, the síndico procurador represented slaves. See de la Fuente, Alejandro, “Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba: Coartación and Papel,” Hispanic American Historical Review 87 (2007): 659–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Varella, Claudia, “El canal administrativo de los conflictos entre esclavos y amos: causas de manumisión decididas ante síndicos en Cuba,” Revista de Indias 71 (2011): 109–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Azevedo, Elciene, “Antonio Bento, homem rude do sertão: um abolicionista nos meandros da justiça e da política,” Locus 13 (2007): 127Google Scholar.

21. Grinberg, O Fiador dos Brasileiros, 258–60.

22. Freitas, Consolidação das Leis Civis, 249–50; and Malheiro, A Escravidão no Brasil, 1:127–28.

23. The expression “estado anormal e anárquico” was used in Medeiros's final brief to the municipal court (Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 28/L). This was a common argument lawyers presented in favor of alleged masters. See, for example, Apelação cível sobre liberdade de escravos, 1865, fundo Relação do Rio de Janeiro, série Apelação Cível, processo n. 123, microfilme RRJ mr 039, Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, Campinas, Brazil. And also Apelação cível sobre liberdade de escravos, 1863, fundo Relação do Rio de Janeiro, série Apelação Cível, processo n. 203, microfilme RRJ mr 061, Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, Campinas, Brazil. Jurist Freitas, by his turn, argued that slaves should work while deposited, and that the money they earned should revert to their alleged masters. Freitas, Consolidação das Leis Civis, 315. Freitas grounded his argument on the following written norms: Alvará of March 5, 1825; Aviso of November 16, 1850; Decisão n. 366 of November 23, 1855; and Aviso n. 372 of November 26, 1859 (Tribunal de Justiça do Rio de Janeiro, Legislação, escravidão, século XIX, 89–90, 103–4, 113–14).

24. The “deposit” was a common procedure to keep movable property safe. Despite treating the putative slave as a “thing,” jurists argued that the deposit was a protective measure that enabled slaves and freedmen to exercise their right of action outside the reach of their putative master. Freitas, Consolidação das Leis Civis, 315; Malheiro, A Escravidão no Brasil, 1:127–28. In the case of Marianna and Antonia, against the Monsignor Pedro Celestino de Alcântara Pacheco, for example, the judge asserted: “for the plaintiffs to defend their rights it is essential that they be outside the dominium of the persons interested in the case against them” (Apelação cível sobre liberdade de escravos, 1863, fundo Relação do Rio de Janeiro, série Apelação Cível, processo n. 103, microfilme RRJ mr 034, 8L, Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, Campinas, Brazil).

25. Keila Grinberg, Liberata.

26. Sidney Chalhoub, Visões da Liberdade. According to Grinberg, almost half of the decisions in freedom suits before the court of appeals of Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century were in favor of liberty. Grinberg, Liberata, 27.

27. Pinheiro, Fernanda, “Transformações de uma prática contenciosa: as ‘ações de liberdade’ produzidas em Mariana (1750/69 e 1850/69),” Locus, 17 (2011): 253–71Google Scholar; and Fernanda Pinheiro, “Em defesa da liberdade.”

28. Azevedo, Elciene, O Direito dos Escravos: Lutas Jurídicas e Abolicionismo na Província de São Paulo (Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2010)Google Scholar; and Mamigonian, Beatriz, “O direito de ser africano livre: os escravos e as interpretações da Lei de 1831,” in Direitos e Justiças no Brasil: Ensaios de História Social, ed. Lara, Silvia Hunold, Mendonça, Joseli Maria Nunes (Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2006), 129–60Google Scholar.

29. We analyzed forty-two status determination lawsuits, filed before the Tribunal da Relação of Rio de Janeiro, between 1861 and 1887. The Tribunal da Relação received appeals that came from individual judges: juiz de direito, juiz de paz, and juiz municipal. Until 1874, there was a Tribunal da Relação in the provinces of Pernambuco, Maranhão, and Bahia, and in the capital, Rio de Janeiro. The Tribunal da Relação of Rio de Janeiro was responsible for appeals that came from the South and Southeast of Brazil. In 1874, judicial reform created new courts of appeals in the cities of Belém, São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Fortaleza, Ouro Preto, Cuiabá, and Goiás (de Lima Lopes, José Reinaldo, ed., O Supremo Tribunal de Justiça do Império [São Paulo: Saraiva, 2010], 292Google Scholar). On the organization of the nineteenth century Brazilian judicial system, see Nequete, Lenine, O Poder Judiciário no Brasil a Partir da Independência (Porto Alegre: Livraria Sulina Editora, 1973)Google Scholar. On the Tribunal da Relação of Rio de Janeiro during the colonial period, see Wehling, Arno and Wehling, Maria José Cavalleiro, Direito e Justiça no Brasil Colonial: o Tribunal da Relação do Rio de Janeiro, 1751–1888 (Rio de Janeiro: Renovar, 2004)Google Scholar.

30. For a definition of ius commune, see Hespanha, António Manuel, Como os Juristas Viam o Mundo, 1550–1750: Direitos, Estados, Pessoas, Coisas, Contratos, Ações e Crimes (Lisboa: António Manuel Hespanha, 2015), 3–24Google Scholar; and Decock, Wim, Theologians and Contract Law: The Moral Transformations of the Ius Commune (ca. 1500–1650) (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2013), 30–31Google Scholar.

31. Birocchi, Italo, Alla Ricerca dell'Ordine (Torino: Giappichelli, 2002)Google Scholar; Grossi, Paolo, El Orden Jurídico Medieval (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 1996)Google Scholar; and Villey, Michel, La Formation de la Pensée Juridique Moderne (Paris: Monchretien, 1975)Google Scholar.

32. Heinecio, Juan, Recitaciones del Derecho Civil (Madrid: Imprenta de P. Sanz, 1830), vol. 1, 77–81Google Scholar, 113–114, 196–198; von Savigny, Friedrich Karl, Traité de Droit Romain (Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot Frères, 1855), vol. 2, 22–26Google Scholar, 36–169.

33. de Freitas, Augusto Teixeira, Código Civil: Esboço (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Justiça e Negócio Interiores, 1952)Google Scholar, 1:24–27; Freitas, Consolidação das Leis Civis, XXXVII–XXXVIII, CXXII–CXXIII, 24, 35, 201, 624, 630; de Loureiro, Lourenço Trigo, Instituições de Direito Civil Brasileiro (Recife: Tipografia Universal, 1861), 1:31–35Google Scholar; Malheiro, A Escravidão no Brasil, 1:36, 46, 58–59, 69, 74–80, 85–88, 118, 141; Ribas, Antonio Joaquim, Curso de Direito Civil Brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Tipografia Universal de Laemmert, 1865), 2:8–9Google Scholar, 25–31; Ribas, Direito Administrativo Brasileiro, 369–379.

34. Two notions structured liberal legal thinking. “Subjective rights” (in Portuguese, direitos subjetivos) were rights attributed to an individual, whereas “objective law” (in Portuguese, direito objetivo) referred to the legal system that protected these rights. See Villey, La Formation de la Pensée Juridique Moderne.

35. Pinheiro, “Transformações de uma prática contenciosa.”

36. Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 7/R.

37. See multiple perspectives on this process in Blaufarb, Rafe, The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clavero, Bartolemé, “Les domaines de la propriété (1789–1814): propriedades y propiedad en el laboratorio revolucionário,” Quaderni Fiorentini per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno, 27 (1998): 269–378Google Scholar; Congost, Rosa, Tierras, Leyes, Historia: Estudios sobre la “Gran Obra de la Propiedad” (Barcelona: Crítica, 2007)Google Scholar; Grossi, Paolo, História da Propriedade e Outros Ensaios (Rio de Janeiro: Renovar, 2006)Google Scholar; Halpérin., Jean-Louis Histoire du Droit des Biens (Paris: Economica, 2008)Google Scholar; Luna, Pablo, “Property, Dominium, and the Hispanic Enlightenment on Both Sides of the Atlantic in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century,” in Property Rights, Land Markets and Economic Growth in the European Countryside (thirteenth-twentieth centuries) ed. Béaur, Gérard, Chevet, Jean-Michel, Pícazo, María Teresa Pérez, and Schofield, Phillipp (Turnhout: Brepols Publisher, 2013), 87–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Willoweit, Dietmar, “Dominium und Proprietas,” Historisches Jahrbuch 26 (1994): 131–56Google Scholar. Specifically for Latin American contexts, see for example D'Agostino, Valeria, Expansión de la Frontera y Ocupación del Nuevo Sur: Los Partidos de Arenales y Ayacucho, Provincia de Buenos Aires, 1820–1900) (Buenos Aires: Prometeo libros, 2012)Google Scholar; Barcos, María Fernanda, Lanteri, Sol, and Marino, Daniela, eds., Tierra, Agua y Monte (Buenos Aires: Teseo, 2017)Google Scholar; Saavedra, Manuel Bastias, “The Lived Space: Possession, Ownership, and Land Sales on the Chilean Frontier, 1790–1830,” Historia Crítica, 67 (2018)Google Scholar; Marino, Daniela, Huixquilucan: ley y justicia en la modernización del espacio rural mexiquense (1856–1910) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2016)Google Scholar; and Tell, Sonia, “Títulos y derechos coloniales a la tierra en los pueblos de indios de Córdoba: una aproximación desde las fuentes del siglo XIX,” Bibliographica Americana, 7 (2011): 201–21Google Scholar.

38. Varela, Laura Beck, Das Sesmarias à Prop.riedade Moderna: um estudo de história do direito brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Renovar, 2005)Google Scholar.

39. Brazilian legal history has so far largely ignored the relevance of slave property in this process. See, for example Carmen Margarida Oliveira Alveal, “Identidades senhoriais e conflitos: convertendo terra em propriedade no mundo Atlântico português (séculos XVI–XVIII)” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2001); Lima, Ruy, Pequena História Territorial do Brasil (São Paulo: Secretaria de Estado de Cultura, 1990)Google Scholar; Motta, Márcias Maria Menendes, Nas Fronteiras do Poder: Conflito e Direito à Terra no Brasil do Século XIX (Niterói: Editora da Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2008)Google Scholar; and Varela, Das Sesmarias à Propriedade Moderna.

40. da Costa, Emília Viotti, Da Senzala à Colônia (São Paulo: Ed. UNESP, 1998)Google Scholar; and da Costa, Emilia Viotti, Da Monarquia à Republica, (São Paulo: Ed. UNESP, 2007)Google Scholar.

41. In Portuguese, Instituto da Ordem dos Advogados Brasileiros. The IAB gathered jurists to discuss professional regulations and promote legal debates on controversial issues that reached the courts (Pena, Eduardo Spiller, “Ser advogado no Brasil Império: uniformização e disciplina no discurso jurídico de formação,” Tuiuti: ciência e cultura 23 (2001): 55–68Google Scholar).

42. Formiga, Armando, Periodismo Jurídico no Brasil do Século XIX (Curitiba: Juruá, 2010)Google Scholar; and Ramos, Henrique Cesar Monteiro Barahona, “O periodismo jurídico brasileiro do século XIX,” Passagens 2 (2010): 54–97Google Scholar.

43. Barbosa, Samuel Rodrigues, “Complexidade e meios textuais de difusão e seleção do direito civil brasileiro pré-codificação,” in História do direito em perspectiva: do antigo regime à modernidade, ed. Fonseca, Ricardo Marcelo and Airton Cerqueira Leite Seelaender (Curitiba: Juruá, 2009), 362–65Google Scholar. On the consequences of Pombal's reforms, see Hespanha, Antonio Manuel, A História do Direito na História Social (Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1878), 70–149Google Scholar.

44. Grinberg, Keila, “Esclavage, Citoyenneté et Élaboration du Code Civil au Brésil (1855–1917),” Cahiers Du Brésil Contemporain 53/54 (2003): 96Google Scholar.

45. On the multiple sources of law in nineteenth-century Brazil, see Barbosa, “Complexidade.”

46. Barbosa, “Complexidade,” 364–65; and Hespanha, A História do Direito, 71–95.

47. Chalhoub, Visões da Liberdade, 106. On the political character of freedom suits, see also Azevedo, O Direito Dos Escravos.

48. As examples of rationalistic conceptions of law in Brazilian legal doctrine, see Freitas, Consolidação das Leis Civis (1876), I-CCXXI; Ribas, Curso de Direito Civil Drasileiro, 1:1–36.

49. Revista do Instituto da Ordem dos Advogados Brasileiros, Anno II, Tomo II, n. 3, 1863, 138. This version of legal thought was not restricted to nations of the civil law tradition, where codes were the main source of law. According to Morton Horwitz, since 1826, American legal treatises promoted a conception of law as science, autonomous from politics (Horwitz., Morton J. The Transformation of American Law, 1870–1960 (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1992Google Scholar), 10.

50. In the original, “um todo harmônico” (Revista do Instituto da Ordem dos Advogados Brasileiros, Anno IV, Tomo III, Janeiro a Outubro, 1865, 66).

51. Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 64/L.

52. Gilberto Freyre indicates that these attempts at final redemption were common in Brazil. Freyre, Gilberto, Casa-grande & Senzala: Formação da família brasileira sob o regime da economia patriarcal (São Paulo: Global, 2006), 525Google Scholar.

53. According to Eduardo França Paiva, this strategy sometimes proved to be successful. Paiva, Eduardo França, Escravos e libertos nas Minas Gerais do século XVIII: estratégias de resistência através dos testamentos (São Paulo: Annablume, 1995), 109Google Scholar.

54. Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 14/R and 20/L.

55. Between 1580 and 1640, the crowns of Spain and Portugal were united under three Spanish kings. Soon after Brazilian independence, the monarchical government enacted a law that established that the 1603 Ordinances would remain enforceable in Brazil (Lei de 20 de Outubro de 1823).

56. de Almeida, Cândido Mendes, Código Filipino: Ou Ordenações e Leis do Reino de Portugal Recopiladas por Mandado Del-Rei D. Philippe I (Rio de Janeiro: Tipografia do Instituto Filomático, 1870), 4:957–58Google Scholar.

57. de Loureiro, Lourenço Trigo, Instituições de Direito Civil Brasileiro (Recife: Tipografia Universal, 1857)Google Scholar, 1:5.

58. Malheiro, A Escravidão no Brasil, 1:102.

59. Ibid., 1:77–78, 102–4, 123.

60. Freitas, Consolidação das Leis Civis, 654–56.

61. da Silva Caroatá, José Próspero Jeová, Imperiais Resoluções Tomadas Sobre Consultas da Seção de Justiça do Conselho de Estado (Rio de Janeiro: B. L. Garnier, 1884), 423–27Google Scholar.

62. Araújo, José Paulo de Figueirôa Nabuco, Legislação Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Tipografia Imperial e Constitucional de J. Villeneuve e Companhia, 1844), 131–32Google Scholar; Ribas, Direito Administrativo Brasileiro, 370. The September 20, 1823 Provision was enacted by the Mesa do Desembargo do Paço, an administrative tribunal that independent Brazil had inherited from the colonial period, and that was eventually extinguished in 1828 (Law of September 22, 1828).

63. Carneiro, Manuel Borges, Direito Civil de Portugal (Lisboa: Tipografia de Antonio José da Rocha, 1851), 1:295–96Google Scholar; da Rocha, Manuel Antonio Coelho, Instituições de Direito Civil Português (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1867), 2:370–71Google Scholar.

64. Apelação cível sobre liberdade de escravos, 1867, fundo Relação do Rio de Janeiro, série Apelação Cível, processo n. 136, microfilme RRJ mr 042, Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, Campinas, Brazil.

65. This argument differentiating the right to become free from the right to be free was not commonly used in status determination lawsuits. We did not find anything similar to this in other court records.

66. Robert Slenes, “The Demography and Economics of Brazilian Slavery: 1850–1888” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1975), 506–30.

67. Paiva, Eduardo França, “Coartações e alforrias nas Minas Gerais do século XVIII: as possibilidades de libertação escrava no principal centro colonial,” Revista de História 133 (1995): 49–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68. Almeida, Código Filipino, 863–67.

69. De la Fuente, “Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba,” 682–88.

70. Phillips, Christopher, Freedom's Port: The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790–1860 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 30–56Google Scholar. Mariana Dantas found that the number of conditional manumissions in Baltimore varied according to the slave's age. This practice was used more with younger slaves, who had more time left to be in shape to work. Ninety-six percent of the manumissions of slaves between the ages of 8 and 14 were conditional. Dantas, Mariana L. R., Black Townsmen: Urban Slavery and Freedom in the Eighteenth-Century Americas (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), 108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71. Dean, Warren. Rio Claro: A Brazilian Plantation System, 1820–1920 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), 72Google Scholar.

72. de Queirós Mattoso, Katia M.. To Be a Slave in Brazil, 1550–1888 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 186Google Scholar.

73. Chalhoub, Sidney, “The Precariousness of Freedom in a Slave Society (Brazil in the Nineteenth Century),” International Review of Social History 56 (2011): 405–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74. Beatriz Gallotti Mamigonian. “To Be a Liberated African in Brazil: Labour and Citizenship in the Nineteenth Century” (PhD diss., University of Waterloo, 2002); Mamigonian, Beatriz Gallotti, Africanos Livres: A Abolição do Tráfico de Escravos no Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2017)Google Scholar.

75. The 1871 “Free Womb Law,” discussed in the conclusion, freed all children henceforth born to slave mothers. The 1885 “Sexagenarians Law,” freed all slaves who were 60 years of age or older. However, they were bound to work for their former master for 3 years, in order to pay for the manumission.

76. See, for example Império do Brasil, Coleção das Decisões do Governo do Império do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Tipografia Nacional, 1857), 20:276; Brasil, Coleção das Decisões do Governo do Império do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Tipografia Nacional, 1863), 26:192, 370; Tribunal de Justiça do Rio de Janeiro, Legislação, Escravidão, Século XIX, 76, 152; O Direito: Revista Mensal de Legislação, Doutrina e Jurisprudência 8 (1875): 186. See also the judge's decision concerning the earnings of Caetana—a conditionally manumitted woman—in the lawsuit filed by Bento, in 1867. Apelação cível sobre liberdade de escravos, 1867, fundo Relação do Rio de Janeiro, série Apelação Cível, processo n. 137, microfilme RRJ mr 042, Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, Campinas, Brazil.

77. Loureiro, , Instituições de Direito Civil Brasileiro (Recife: Tipografia Universal, 1862)Google Scholar, 1:34.

78. Malheiro, A Escravidão no Brasil, 1:41, 72–73, 91, 106, 109–14, 118–21. On coercive labor other than slave labor in nineteenth-century Brazil, see Mendonça, Joseli, “Sobre cadeias e coerção: experiências de trabalho no centro-sul do Brasil no século XIX,” Revista brasileira de história, 32 (2012): 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79. Freitas, Consolidação das Leis Civis, 36, 653.

80. See also the 1830 Brazilian Criminal Code, article 179 (Codigo Criminal do Imperio do Brazil, 1830); and Grinberg, Keila and Mamigonian, Beatriz, “Le crime de réduction à l'esclavage d'une personne libre (Brésil, XXIe siècle),” Brésil(s) 11 (2017): 11Google Scholar.

81. Mariana Armond Dias Paes, “Sujeitos da história, sujeitos de direitos: personalidade jurídica no Brasil escravista (1860–1888)” (MA thesis, University of São Paulo, 2014),” 140–69; and Fernanda Pinheiro, “Em defesa da liberdade: libertos e livres de cor nos tribunais do Antigo Regime Português” (PhD diss., State University of Campinas, 2013)” 21–88. On the argument of possession of freedom in Louisiana, see Scott, Rebecca, “Paper Thin: Freedom and Re-enslavement in the Diaspora of the Haitian Revolution,” Law and History Review 29 (2011): 1061CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Scott, Rebecca, “Social Facts, Legal Fictions, and the Attribution of Slave Status: The Puzzle of Prescription,” Law and History Review 35 (2017): 9–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Historians have not analyzed the acquisition of slaves through the exercise of possession in Brazil. Nonetheless, general possession theory was compatible with this situation. A quick review of the lawsuits available at the National Archives in Rio de Janeiro shows that there were some lawsuits filed by one alleged master against another discussing the ownership of a slave on the grounds of possession.

82. Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 6/L.

83. Manutenção e libelo de liberdade, 1836, Série: Apelação Cível, Fundo/Coleção: Relação do Rio de Janeiro, Microfilme: AN 037-2006, Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Reference code 84.0.ACI.14.

84. Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 6/R. The practice of baptizing children as slaves—despite their controversial legal status—was common in Brazil. In the lawsuit filed by Angelica and her children against João Antonio de Mello in 1865, the plaintiffs claimed that they were baptized as slaves by the defendant, despite being descendants of Escolastica, a freedwoman. However, the plaintiffs were not able to prove that the baptism certificates were false and were therefore declared slaves by the courts. Apelação cível sobre liberdade de escravos, 1865, fundo Relação do Rio de Janeiro, série Apelação Cível, processo n. 123, microfilme RRJ mr 039, Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, Campinas, Brazil.

85. De la Fuente, “Slaves and the creation of legal rights in Cuba,” 679.

86. Phillips, Freedom's Port, 45.

87. Pena, Eduardo Spiller, Pajens da Casa Imperial: Jurisconsultos, Escravidão e a Lei de 1871 (Campinas: Unicamp, 2001), 85–88Google Scholar.

88. Ibid., 92–93.

89. Malheiro, A Escravidão no Brasil, §125.

90. Pena, Pajens da Casa Imperial, 95.

91. Ibid., 92.

92. Revista do Instituto da Ordem dos Advogados Brasileiros, Anno I, Tomo I, n. 1, 1862, 31.

93. Grinberg, O Fiador dos Brasileiros, 215.

94. Freitas, Consolidação das leis civis (1876), 36, 653; and Morgan, Thomas Gibbes, Civil Code of the State of Louisiana (New Orleans: Bloomfield & Steel, 1859), 33Google Scholar.

95. Apelação cível sobre liberdade de escravos, 1861, fundo Relação do Rio de Janeiro, série Apelação Cível, processo n. 165, microfilme RRJ mr 051, Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, Campinas, Brazil.

96. “De ventre livre não pode nascer escravo” (Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 20/R).

97. The original text said “É garantido o Direito de Propriedade em toda sua plenitude.”

98. This frequency was not much different in previous and subsequent years. See Grinberg, O Fiador dos Brasileiros, 205.

99. Revista do Instituto da Ordem dos Advogados Brasileiros, Anno I, Tomo I, n. 4, 1862, 211.

100. Article 179, XXII established that if public good (“bem publico”) required a citizen's property, he should be previously compensated for its value. However, the law had to mark the cases (“A Lei marcará os casos”) in which an exception was possible; Chalhoub, Visões da Liberdade, 106–7.

101. Legal doctrine considered married women “incapable,” because they were subject to the “marital power.” However, the “marital power” was not the sole restriction on women's legal status. Before getting married, they were subjected to the “patria potestas” (father's power). After their husbands died, they were in a “state of widowhood.” On women's legal status during the nineteenth century, see Isabela Guimarães Rabelo do Amaral, “Resistência feminina no Brasil oitocentista: as ações de divórcio e nulidade de matrimônio no Bispado de Mariana” (MA diss., Federal University of Minas Gerais, 2012), 93–117. Married women's civil capacity was discussed in status determination lawsuits when they freed household slaves. See, for example, Apelação cível sobre liberdade de escravos, 1863, fundo Relação do Rio de Janeiro, série Apelação Cível, processo n. 105, microfilme RRJ mr 034, Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, Campinas, Brazil and Apelação cível sobre liberdade de escravos, 1867, fundo Relação do Rio de Janeiro, série Apelação Cível, processo n. 135, microfilme RRJ mr 042, Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, Campinas, Brazil.

102. Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 19/L.

103. “a favor da liberdade muitas coisas são outhorgadas contra as regras geraes de Direito” (Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 18); See Almeida, Código filipino, 4:790–91.

104. This passage was extensively used in status determination lawsuits. Grinberg found 22 explicit references to this passage in a sample of 110 re-enslavement lawsuits filed before the Court of Appeals of Rio de Janeiro, between 1808 and 1888 (Grinberg, Keila, “Re-enslavenment, Rights and Justice in Nineteenth Century Brazil,” Translating the Americas 1 [2013]: 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Nonetheless, the passage did not originally refer to African slavery. It addressed Arabian slavery (mouros) in the Iberian peninsula, especially during the fifteenth century.

105. Malheiro, A Escravidão no Brasil, 1:63–65. This principle was also mentioned in Carneiro, Direito Civil de Portugal, 1:96; Freitas, Consolidação das Leis Civis, 70; and Ribas, Direito Administrativo Brasileiro, 374–75.

106. “Um átomo qualquer de liberdade adquirido pelo escravo irradia-se por ele todo com a mesma força vivificante do espirito de que é ela faculdade componente, por tal modo que desaparece o torpor, a inércia anterior da condição material destruída pelo aparecimento daquele átomo” (Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 19/L).

107. Somerset v. Stewart, Lofft 1, 98 ER 499 (1772); and Commonwealth v. Aves, 35 Mass. 193 (1836).

108. Revista do Instituto dos Advogados Brasileiros, Anno II, Tomo II, n. 3, 1863, 145; and Malheiro, A Escravidão no Brasil, 1:432, fn. 558.

109. “Considerable evidence suggests that local, popular traditions, dating back at least as far as the sixteenth century, freedpeople in bondage when they crossed particular state borders. We call this custom, sometimes articulated in court decisions or positive legislation by various legislative bodies, the ‘free soil principle’” (Peabody, Sue and Grinberg, Keila, “Free Soil: The Generation and Circulation of an Atlantic Legal Principle,” Slavery & Abolition 32 (2011): 331–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 331).

110. “propriedade compensada é sempre propriedade” (Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 19/R).

111. Articles 10, 15, VIII, 102, XXI, and 152 of the 1824 Constitution.

112. Article 101 of the 1824 Constitution.

113. “faça-se rigorosa aplicação da lei” (Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 48/R). The constitutional principle of separation of powers also grounded other arguments made by lawyers in status determination lawsuits. It was present, for example, in the enslavement suit filed by Mariano José Pires against Januária, Francisca, Thereza, Lucia Maria do Patrocinio, Maria d'Assumpção, and Anna, in 1867, before the municipal judge of Patrocínio, in the province of Minas Gerais. At the appeals level, their lawyer argued that the executive and the legislative powers were the ones in charge of solving the problem of emancipation. The judiciary power should not interfere in this issue and should simply apply the law, even if it was too harsh. To conclude, he added the Latin aphorism: “dura lex, sed lex.” Apelação cível sobre liberdade de escravos, 1867, fundo Relação do Rio de Janeiro, série Apelação Cível, processo n. 135, microfilme RRJ mr 042, Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth. On the use of the argument of the separation of powers to defend the slave trade to Brazil, see Parron, A Política da Ecravidão no Império do Brasil.

114. Ajello, Raffaele, Arcana Juris—Diritto e Politica nel Settecento Italiano (Napoli: Jovene, 1976)Google Scholar; Halperin, Jean-Louis, L'Impossible Code Civil (Paris: PUF, 1992)Google Scholar; and Birocchi, Italo, Alla Ricerca Dell'Ordine (Torino: Giappichelli, 2002)Google Scholar.

115. Grinberg, O Fiador dos Brasileiros, 237–39.

116. Ibid., 249.

117. The first Brazilian Civil Code was approved in 1916, after the fall of the monarchy in 1889.

118. Grinberg, O Fiador dos Brasileiros, 251.

119. Bueno, José Antonio Pimenta, Direito Público Brasileiro e Análise da Constituição do Império (Rio de Janeiro: Tipografia Imp. e Const. de J. Villeneuve e C., 1857), 329Google Scholar. Later, in 1877, Lobão Cedro would argue that legislators should try to reduce the interference of legal hermeneutics as much as possible (O Direito: Revista Mensal de Legislação, Doutrina e Jurisprudência 14 (1877), 250, Anno V, vol. 14, 1877, 250).

120. “grito imprudente de emancipação” (Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 27/L). A similar rhetorical argument was made in the freedom suit filled by the alleged slave Manuel against Manuel Paulo de Oliveira (Apelação cível sobre liberdade de escravos, 1861, fundo Relação do Rio de Janeiro, série Apelação Cível, processo n. 165, microfilme RRJ mr 051, p. 47, Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, Campinas, Brazil).

121. Chalhoub, Sidney, Machado de Assis, Historiador (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003)Google Scholar.

122. Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 48/R-49/L.

123. Horwitz, Morton, “The Rise of Legal Formalism,” in The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 253–268Google Scholar.

124. Historians have argued that slaves—especially those who, like Benta, went to court—played an active role in this process of delegitimation (Mattos, Das cores do silêncio; Azevedo, O Direito dos Escravos; and Chalhoub, Visões da Liberdade).

125. Grinberg, O Fiador dos Brasileiros, 250–51.

126. Ghachem, Malick W., “Prosecuting Torture: The Strategic Ethics of Slavery in Pre-Revolutionary Saint-Domingue (Haiti),” Law and History Review 29 (2011): 1006CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

127. On the Haitian Revolution see Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

128. Malheiro, A Escravidão no Brasil, 36.

129. “rigor e reflexão de suas sentenças” (Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 27/R).

130. For an analysis of the slaves’ characterization as domestic and public enemies in Brazil, see de Azevedo, Celia Maria Marinho, Onda negra, medo branco: o negro no imaginário das elites – século XIX (São Paulo: Annablume, 2004)Google Scholar.

131. Costa, Da Senzala à Colônia, 357; Article 113 of the 1830 Criminal Code prescribed penalties between 15 years in the galleys and death to insurrection leaders, and corporal punishment to other insurgents.

132. On this revolt, see Reis, João José, Rebelião Escrava no Brasil: A História do Levante dos Malês em 1835 (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003)Google Scholar

133. “Haitianism” referred to the widespread fear that slaves would revolt as the Saint-Domingue slaves had done in the late eighteenth century. On “Haitianism” in Brazil, see Rodrigues, Jaime, O infame comércio: propostas e experiências no final do tráfico de africanos para o Brasil, 1800–1850, (Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2000)Google Scholar.

134. Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 27/R; For a similar argument about the correlation between the number of slaves in the province and the risk of rebellion, see the Campinas police deputy's report cited in Costa, Da Senzala à Colônia, 360.

135. “mais santo e natural direito” (Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 32/R).

136. José Bonifácio de Andrade e Silva, Representação à Assembléia Constituinte e Legislativa do Império do Brasil sobre a Escravatura (Rio de Janeiro: Tipographia de J.E.S. Cabral, 1840), 11. Natural law, however, was also used to defend the illegal slave trade in Brazil, see Parron, A Política da Escravidão no Império do Brasil, 144.

137. Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 33/R.

138. These conjectures are based on Grinberg, O Fiador dos Brasileiros, 255–60.

139. “de inteira harmonia com os princípios da ciência” (Apelação Cível 84.ACI.0133, 59/L).

140. TJRJ, Legislação, escravidão, século XIX, 152.

141. Laidler, Christiane, “A Lei do Ventre Livre: interesses e disputas em torno do projeto de “abolição gradual,” Escritos 5 (2011): 169–205Google Scholar.

142. Historians have argued that slavery prevented Brazil from adopting a civil code during the nineteenth century. Grinberg, Keila, Código Civil e Cidadania (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2002)Google Scholar. Nonetheless, Brazilian jurists, such as Freitas, discussed slavery within the limits of general civil law, applied to all kinds of property, which suggests that those in charge of codification did not believe that slavery was an obstacle to the creation of a civil code.

143. “filho agradecido” (Malheiro, A Escravidão no Brasil, §148). On September 28, 1871, the Free Womb Law extinguished the possibility of revoking manumissions for reasons of ingratitude.

144. Costa, Da Monarquia à Republica, 515. On the precariousness of freedom in nineteenth century Brazil, see Chalhoub, “The Precariousness of Freedom in a Slave Society.”