Law and Christianity in Latin America: The Work of Great Jurists (original) (raw)

2021, M.C. Mirow and Rafael Domingo (eds.), Routledge

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.