Abstract

CLAVERO, Bartolomé. Slavery and Codification in Brazil , 1888-2017. For a decolonized history of Latin American Law. Rev. hist. derecho [online]. 2018, n.55, pp.1-12. ISSN 1853-1784.

Brazil is currently ruled by a Constitution, a Civil Code and a Criminal Code all grounded on freedom's rights without any conceivable loophole for slavery. The Civil Code, which is a code common to Business Law, is inspired by a social constitutionalism that does not seem to allow in the whole field of private law the least possibility of practices contrary to the freedom of individuals. Brazil is also party to quite a number of multilateral human rights treaties that undoubtedly accompany and strengthen the very same paradigm. Yet, slavery is practiced in Brazil. This essay attempts to explain how this is legally possible. It also faces the challenge that the structure of the Brazilian legal system embedded today in international law -together with its serious difficulties in being up to the task of abolishing slavery- is posing to a history of both codification and constitutionalism approached from a non-Eurocentric perspective. In short, here are a couple of interrelated questions: does legal codification have anything to do with either slavery or its failed abolition? If so, does slavery, whether de iure or de facto, happen to be truly relevant for the whole of late modern legal history?.

Keywords : Slavery; Post-abolition; Constitutionalism; Codification; International law.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )