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Causas Civiles En La Florida Oriental, 1785-1821 [Civil Cases in East Florida, 1785-1821]
Matthew C. Mirow
A study of civil litigation in the Spanish province of East Florida from 1785 to 1821. (Un estudio de las causas civiles en la Florida Oriental, 1785-1821).
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Gonzalo Herrera y las Floridas Frente a las Cortes (Gonzalo Herrera and the Floridas Before the Cortes)
Matthew C. Mirow
Esta contribución explora la promulgación de la Constitución de Cádiz en las Floridas y la representación de las Floridas por Gonzalo Herrera en las Cortes de Cádiz en 1813. Es un intento de colocar el trabajo de Herrera en el contexto de la participación de la Florida en el imperio colonial español y sus experiencias constitucionales. Primero, este estudio ofrece un breve resumen de la adopción de la Constitución por la Florida Oriental y la implementación de su estructura constitucional. Segundo, la representación de las Floridas por Herrera ante las Cortes es discutida desde el punto de vista de los documentos disponibles. This contribution explores the promulgation of the Constitution of Cádiz in the Floridas and the representation of the Floridas by Gonzalo Herrera in the Cortes de Cádiz in 1813. It attempts to place Herrera’s work in the context of Florida’s participation in the Spanish Empire and its constitutional experience. First, the study offers a summary of the adoption of the Constitution in East Florida and the implementation of its constitutional structure. Second, Herrera’s representation before the Cortes is examined from the standpoint of the available sources.
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Marbury En Mexico: La Precoz Migracion De La Judicial Review Al Sur [Marbury in Mexico: Judicial Review's Precocious Southern Migration]
M. C. Mirow
Spanish Abstract: Una versión revisada y traducida del Marbury in Mexico: Judicial Review's Precocious Southern Migration, 35 Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 41-177 (2007). Traducción de Ruben Sanchez Gil e Isaac Josue Cervantes Castro.
English Abstract: This is a revised and translated version of Marbury in Mexico: Judicial Review's Precocious Southern Migration, 35 Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 41-117 (2007). Translated by Ruben Sanchez Gil and Isaac Josue Cervantes Castro.
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The Law Reports of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Volume III: Prosecutor v. Charles Ghankay Taylor (The Taylor Case)
Charles C. Jalloh and Simon Meisenberg eds.
The Special Court for Sierra Leone was established through signature of a bilateral treaty between the United Nations and the Government of Sierra Leone in early 2002, making it the third modern ad hoc international criminal tribunal. The tribunal has tried various persons, including former Liberian President Charles Ghankay Taylor, for allegedly bearing "greatest responsibility" for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed during the latter half of the Sierra Leonean armed conflict. It completed its work in December 2013. A new Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone, based in Freetown and with offices in The Hague, has been created to carry out its essential “residual” functions. This volume, which consists of three books and a CD-ROM and is edited by two legal experts on the Sierra Leone court, presents, for the first time in a single place, a comprehensive collection of all the interlocutory decisions and final trial and appeals judgments issued by the court in the case Prosecutor v. Charles Ghankay Taylor.
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Counterinsurgency as Genocidal Intent: From the Ottoman Christians to the Bosnian Muslims
Hannibal Travis
According to publications and statements by the Turkish government, the question of genocide in the late Ottoman Empire is ultimately a question of intent. The Turkish Foreign Ministry, as well as many contemporary Turkish and US-based scholars, argues that Ottoman imperial leaders lacked genocidal intent during the First World War and its aftermath because Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks rebelled against the government, killed Turkish and Kurdish civilians, and survived in some areas of the empire, including Constantinople, Smyrna, Aleppo and Mosul. These factors allegedly indicate an intention on the part of Ottoman officials to engage in military operations rather than to target civilian communities for destruction. Surveying the reports of the German and Austro-Hungarian allies of the Ottomans during the war, this chapter points out that genocidal intent on the part of imperial leaders preceded the larger-scale outbreak of Armenian rebellions in the eastern Ottoman Empire. Genocidal intent, according to the ICTY's jurisprudence, is consistent with war and rebellion, and may be inferred from repeated or systematic atrocities, and expressions of a desire to seek vengeance, prior to or during a war. On the whole, the German and Austro-Hungarian diplomatic traffic, as previously argued by Vahakn Diadrian and other scholars, supports the conclusion that the Ottoman policy was disconnected from rebellious activity,dispropor-tionate in the historical context of warfare, and uniquely religious and sectarian in its motivation and execution. The chapter concludes that denialist arguments misunderstand the nature of genocide, which does not necessarily refer to the complete destruction of a group or a totally one-sided slaughter.
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The Economics of Book Digitization and the Google Books Litigation
Hannibal Travis
Electronic commerce is big business, and it is getting bigger: it now accounts for 7.5 percent of all retail sales in the US, and continues to expand at double-digit annual rates. The steady growth of Internet commerce over the past twenty years has given rise to a host of new legal issues in a broad range of fields. This authoritative Research Handbook comprises chapters by leading scholars in the field. Their explanations and insights will provide a solid foundation for newcomers to the subject, and will also broaden and deepen the understanding of e-commerce experts. Key topics covered include: contracting, payments, intellectual property, extraterritorial enforcement, alternative dispute resolution, social media, consumer protection, network neutrality, online gambling, domain name governance, and privacy. With the rise of Internet commerce, this book will be an invaluable resource for business lawyers as well as legal scholars with an interest in any phase of e-commerce law-- Provided by publisher.
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When the UN Refuses to Prevent Genocide : Legal, Political, and Religious Factors
Hannibal Travis
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was the first human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations, reflecting the global commitment to 'never again' in the wake of the Holocaust. Seven decades on, The United Nations and Genocide examines how the UN has met, and failed to meet, the commitment to 'prevent and punish' the crime of genocide. It explores why the UN was unable to respond effectively to the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, the Balkans and Darfur, and considers new approaches recently adopted by the UN to address genocide. This volume asks the crucial question: can the UN protect peoples from genocide in the modern world?.
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United States of America
Hannibal Travis, George C. Harris, and Sabrina Larson
The banking and financial services industry is one of the largest segments of the US economy and operates in a highly complex regulatory framework at both the national and state level. The result is a dual banking system in which parallel state and federal banking systems coexist. Federal banks operate under federal charters and federal laws, while state banks operate under state charters and state laws. The two systems are, however, interrelated, and most state-chartered banks are subject to certain federal regulations, while federal banks are subject to certain ate laws. Commentators note that a benefit of the dual system is that state and national banks can innovate in the interest of customer service in spheres of different sizes, with state banks serving in a way as laboratories for new developments in bank powers, structures and consumer protection. One commentator states: “When state or national regulatory programs saw customers migrating from one charter to the other, regulators responded with measures enhancing the ability of banks to provide services that customers wanted. That is no small reason why so many innovations in bank services in the last century were developed by U.S. banks”. State law that conflicts with federal law is pre-empted under the US Constitution. Various uniform codes have been promulgated, such as the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and the Uniform Trust Code, as guidelines that states may adopt and modify, in an effort to promote consistency in fundamental areas of law. The restatements of law, such as the Restatement of Torts and the Restatement of Trusts; serve this function as well.
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Fatal love : Spousal Killers, Law, and Punishment in the Late Colonial Spanish Atlantic
Victor M. Uribe-Uran
For historians, spousal murders are significant for what they reveal about social and family history, in particular the hidden history of day-to-day gender relations, conflicts, crimes, and punishments. Fatal Love examines this phenomenon in the late colonial Spanish Atlantic, focusing on incidents occurring in New Spain (colonial Mexico), New Granada (colonial Colombia), and Spain from the 1740s to the 1820s. In the more than 200 cases consulted, it considers not only the social features of the murders, but also the legal discourses and judicial practices guiding the historical treatment of spousal murders, helping us understand the historical intersection of domestic violence, private and state/church patriarchy, and the law.
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The Uncertain Hope of Body Cameras
Howard Wasserman
Police body cameras offer numerous benefits and are likely a net positive, especially with members of the public increasingly concerned about police misconduct and excessive force and increasingly armed with their own recording technology. But the public debate about body cameras must reflect the nuance and complexity of camera policy, grounded in the limitations of video evidence and the hard questions of implementation. The current discussion-in which cameras are erroneously touted as magic solutions that resolve all problems-highlights the failure to recognize that complexity. And it should prompt government officials and all other stakeholders in the public debate to take a more cautious, realistic, and, hopefully, more effective approach to body cameras and to video evidence. If there is a common lesson from Ferguson, that should be it.
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The Bluebook Uncovered : A Practical Guide to Mastering Legal Citation : (Twentieth Edition of the Bluebook)
Dionne E. Anthon
"This book is designed to help first-year law students master the fundamental Bluebook citation rules that will be needed in legal research and writing courses (LRW) and in legal practice. It can also act as a Bluebook refresher for other law students, clerks, attorneys, judges, and paralegals"--P. xi.
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Governance Feminism’s Imperial Misadventure: Progress International Law, and the Security of Afghan Women
Cyra Akila Choudhury
Contesting Feminisms explores how Asian Muslim women make decisions on appropriating Islam and Islamic lifestyles through their own participation in the faith. The contributors highlight the fact that secularism has provided the space for some women to reclaim their religious identity and their own feminisms. Through compelling case studies and theoretical discussions, this volume challenges mainstream Western and national feminisms that presume homogeneity of Muslim women’s lives to provide a deeper understanding of the multiple realities of feminism in Muslim communities.
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El Nuevo Latinoamericanismo Jurídico
Jorge L. Esquirol
El análisis de la economía política del conocimiento jurídico pone en evidencia que el conocimiento jurídico es una forma de poder que tiene dinámicas propias e importantes implicaciones prácticas. El conjunto de normas y actividades que componen esta economía política determina cuestiones como cuáles son los objetos de estudio que se consideran valiosos en las facultades de derecho; cuáles son los contextos de producción de conocimiento jurídico que se imaginan ricos o pobres; cuál es la dirección que toma el intercambio de productos jurídicos en un mundo globalizado, y cómo se describen los aportes que hacen los países del Norte y del Sur global a las tradiciones dominantes.
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Think Again : Contrarian Reflections on Life, Culture, Politics, Religion, Law, and Education
Stanley E. Fish
From 1995 to 2013, Stanley Fish's provocative New York Times columns consistently generated passionate discussion and debate. In Think Again, he has assembled almost one hundred of his best columns into a thematically arranged collection with a substantial new introduction that explains his intention in writing these pieces and offers an analysis of why they provoked so much reaction. Some readers reported being frustrated when they couldn't figure out where Fish, one of America's most influential thinkers, stood on the controversies he addressed in the essays--from atheism and affirmative action to plagiarism and postmodernism. But, as Fish says, that is the point. Opinions are cheap; you can get them anywhere. Instead of offering just another set of them, Fish analyzes and dissects the arguments put forth by different sides--in debates over free speech, identity politics, the gun lobby, and other hot-button topics--in order to explain how their arguments work or don't work. In short, these are essays that teach you not what to think but how to think more clearly. Brief and accessible yet challenging, these essays provide all the hard-edged intellectual, cultural, and political analysis one expects from Fish. At the same time, the collection includes a number of revealing and even poignant autobiographical essays in which, as Fish says, "readers will learn about my anxieties, my aspirations, my eccentricities, my foibles, my father, and my obsessions--Frank Sinatra, Ted Williams, basketball, and Jews." Reflecting the wide-ranging interests of one of today's leading critics, this is Fish's broadest and most engaging book to date.
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Central Banks, Systemic Lending, and Collateral Markets
Jose M. Gabilondo
This chapter examines the evolving role that central banks play in funding private banks and, increasingly, a wider range of nonbank financial intermediaries. During periods of financial stability, the central bank may provide last resort funding to an individual bank suffering a temporary liquidity shortage due to factors specific to that bank. During a financial crisis in which it is not individual banks but, rather, a sector of the funding market that becomes illiquid, the central bank will also engage in systemic lending to help stabilize an entire sector of the financial market. Traditionally, access to the central bank’s last resort liquidity was available only to depository banks with a preexisting relationship to the central bank and with collateral that met strict guidelines. This chapter analyzes how the traditional approach to central bank funding has changed. The first part of this chapter situates last resort lending by the central bank in the context of the recent emergence of the interbank funding channel, a liquidity clearinghouse more inclusive of collateral and counterparties than the traditional money market. The second part focuses on how central banks changed their traditional approach to providing last resort lending after the 2007 liquidity break. Previous approaches had emphasized efforts to ensure that solvent banks remained liquid. This time, though, central banks served a wider range of financial intermediaries and became willing to accept as collateral a wider range of private assets, including structured finance instruments.
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La Manipulación del Derecho a Través de la Agenda Social : el Caso Dos Misiones Bolivarianas
Manuel A. Gomez
La idea del derecho como instrumento no es nueva. Por mas de un siglo el derecho ha sido visto como un medio para alcanzar un fin en vez de un valor en si mismo (Gilmore, 1961) Los objetivos perseguidos por el derecho generalmente se relacionan con la consecución de propósitos ejemplares (Tamanaha, 2007) tales como la justicia (Pound, 1913), el cambio social (Ball et al, 1962) o el desarrollo económico (Garcia-Bolivar, 2008). Las formas concretas como el derecho puede ser utilizado para lograr estos objetivos son de variada índole. En terminos generales, sin embargo, los instrumentos jurídicos suelen oscilar entre dos extremos. De una parte, la ley aparece como un mecanismo que limita la conducta oficial, como una forma de facilitar la iniciativa privada y la libertad. Esto es, el derecho es concebido como una herramienta facilitadora. En el otro extremo, el derecho es visto como un instrumento de largo alcance cuya función primordial es extender la acción del estado a todos los ámbitos de la vida social, regulando la conducta y minimizando la iniciativa privada.
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Cultura Jurídica y Política en Venezuela Revolucionaria (1999-2013)
Manuel A. Gómez and Rogelio Pérez Perdomo
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Estudio Introductorio: Cultura Jurídica y Política en Tiempos de Chavez
Manuel A. Gomez and Rogelio Perez-Perdomo
Generalmente se admite que Venezuela inició en 1999 un nuevo período de su historia política que ha implicado cambios importantes en su sistema político, en la economía, el derecho y, en general, en la sociedad. El gobierno mismo dice que estamos viviendo una revolución socialista y que se han producido cambios capaces de producir una sociedad y un hombre nuevos. Se puede discutir que sea una revolución socialista, o aún una revolución, se podría discutir también que sea bolivariana, como inicialmente fue bautizada, pero estos no son temas que nos preocuparán en esta obra. Lo que creemos que esta fuera de duda es que ha implicado importantes cambios en la sociedad, la economía, la política y el derecho, y nos interesa especialmente detectar cuáles de esos cambios son culturales en el sentido de que no se quedan en los meros instrumentos jurídicos aprobados o las políticas públicas anunciadas, sino que afecten las valoraciones, creencias y actitudes de la población o de ciertos sectores de ella.
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The Law and Politics of the Charles Taylor Case
Charles C. Jalloh
This cahpter discusses a rare successful prosecution of a head of state by a modern international criminal court. The case involved former Liberian president Charles Taylor. Taylor, who was charged and tried by the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone (“SCSL”), was convicted in April 2013 for planning and aiding and abetting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious international humanitarian law violations. He was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment. The SCSL Appeals Chamber upheld the historic conviction and sentence in September 2013. Taylor is currently serving his sentence in Great Britain. This article, from an insider who worked as an interim court-appointed defense attorney during the opening of the trial in The Hague in June 2007, is the first to comprehensively evaluate this significant international case since it concluded. I expose the numerous controversies that dogged the trial of Liberia’s former president — from the questions that arose about how best to sequence peace for Liberia and justice for Sierra Leone following the prosecution’s initial unveiling of his judicially sealed indictment through to concerns about whether he should be tried in the heart of Europe, as opposed to Africa, to the completion of appeals. I conclude that the trial of former President Taylor is significant for the SCSL because he was the most powerful suspect to be indicted by the court. Although it may be too early to draw definitive conclusions, a key lesson that we can derive for international criminal justice is that the indictment of a sitting president for international crimes may sometimes help loosen his grip on power, thereby enabling his subsequent prosecution.
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The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations in Advancing International Criminal Justice
Charles C. Jalloh
This chapter examines the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in advancing international criminal justice. I argue that NGOs have had considerable impact by contributing, among other things, to the global struggle against impunity through advocacy for the creation of more robust institutional mechanisms to prosecute those who perpetrate such crimes. This ranges from supporting the processes that led to the creation of several ad hoc international tribunals for Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, all the way through to the establishment of an independent permanent international penal court based in The Hague. The crux of my claim is that a historically sensitive approach to evaluating the role of NGOs in international governance shows that these entities are not only willing, but also capable of enhancing the protection of human rights and international criminal justice especially but not exclusively in less developed regions of the world.
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International Criminal Justice Processes in Rwanda and Sierra Leone: Lessons for Liberia
Charles C. Jalloh and Andrew Morgan
This article seeks to evaluate the role and contributions of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) to the task of dispensing justice to those most responsible for the commission of international crimes during the Rwandan and Sierra Leonean conflicts. The authors contrast those two situations to that of Liberia, where a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in lieu of criminal accountability. We argue that part of the unfair criticism of international criminal law is driven by the unrealistic expectation that ad hoc criminal courts such as the ICTR and the SCSL cannot only mete out credible justice, but also help to restore peace and promote national reconciliation in deeply divided post conflict societies. We submit that, even in best case scenarios, such courts can only serve justice to individual perpetrators of horrific crimes in fair trials that complies with their statutes and international human rights law. We therefore call for a return to their primary intended roles as criminal courts when evaluating their legacies. Toward that end, we test the work of the ICTR and the SCSL against eight factors relevant to assessing their achievements and limitations as criminal courts. We show that, although ours is not an empirical study, it appears that those special tribunals made important contributions to the process of giving justice to victims of atrocity crimes in Rwanda and Sierra Leone.
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Transfer of Cases Under the Jurisprudence of the ICTR and Lessons Learned for the ICC
Alhagi Marong and Charles C. Jalloh
In this chapter, we examine the Rule 11bis jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Under that caselaw, which spurred significant legal reforms in Rwanda, the judges fleshed out the requirements that national criminal justice systems must meet in order to prosecute serious international crimes where they enjoy concurrent jurisdiction with an international tribunal that enjoyed primacy. Though rooted in fundamentally different assumptions, we suggest that there is convergence between the primacy principle of the ad-hoc tribunals, under which national jurisdictions may at any stage of their criminal procedures be formally requested to defer to the competence of the international court, and the principle of complementarity at the International Criminal Court ("ICC") which essentially reverses the top down relational model in favour of a bottom up approach. With the shift to complementarity, which governs at the permanent ICC, the international court is not entitled to step in to a domestic jurisdiction to investigate or prosecute the core atrocity crimes unless the State is inactive, unwilling and or unable to prosecute. We argue that a creative approach to the interpretation and application of the complementarity principle offers the ICC an opportunity to learn from the ICTR's rich Rule 11 bis experience. By taking a nuanced approach that articulates the minimum standards that domestic jurisdictions of situation countries must fulfill for cases to be rendered inadmissible at the permanent court in The Hague, the ICC could help "bring up" the standards in domestic courts and to also potentially stimulate deep legal reforms at the national level.
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Testamentary Proceedings in Spanish East Florida, 1783-1821
Matthew C. Mirow
The East Florida Papers in the Library of Congress reveal a great deal about law, legal institutions, legal practice, and legality in colonial Florida during the second Spanish period from 1783 to 1821. This contribution provides an initial study of the 372 testamentary proceedings related to 168 decedents recorded in these papers. It describes these cases and discusses the dossier of one case to illustrate the administrative and legal work done by Spanish officials to distribute a decedent's property. Proceedings include individual claims for debts against estates; sets of documents related to the administration of estates such as wills, inventories, birth records, and marriage records; and a variety of petitions dealing with administration and the distribution of property. The materials provide a window into will making, family life and structure, commerce, women, and accidental and suspicious deaths. Numerous petitions sought the disposition, transfer, and manumission of slaves. The contribution concludes with a description and analysis of the documents related to the estate of Pedro Dimarache, a Corsican carpenter who died testate in St. Augustine in 1792.
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The Cadiz Constitution in Cuba and Florida
Matthew C. Mirow
This chapter seeks to provide new insights into the promulgation and effect of the Constitution of Cádiz 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. Augustine felt themselves to be as profoundly Spanish as their Cuban counterparts to the south who were able to comply more exactly with the dictates of the Constitution and its procedures. Both cities and regions appear to have appropriated the Constitution deeply into their political structures. They both promulgated the Constitution several times and established constitutional institutions in light of the guiding provisions. Only recently have scholars recognized the extent of the second promulgation of the Constitution of Cádiz in St. Augustine in 1820 and of the third promulgation of the Constitution in Santiago de Cuba in 1836. This contribution will examine the effect of the decrees of the Cortes, the promulgation and implementation of the Constitution of Cádiz, and the varied responses to revocation and re-promulgation of the Constitution in both locations.
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Latin American Constitutions : The Constitution of Cádiz and its Legacy in Spanish America
M. C. Mirow
Latin American Constitutions provides a comprehensive historical study of constitutionalism in Latin America from the independence period to the present, focusing on the Constitution of Cádiz, a foundational document in Latin American constitutionalism. Although drafted in Spain, it was applied in many regions of Latin America, and deputies from America formed a significant part of the drafting body. The politicization of constitutionalism reflected in Latin America's first moments proved to be a lasting legacy evident in the legal and constitutional world of the region today: many of Latin America's present challenges to establishing effective constitutionalism can be traced to the debates, ideas, structures, and assumptions of this text. This book explores the region's attempts to create effective constitutional texts and regimes in light of an established practice of linking constitutions to political goals and places important constitutional thinkers and regional constitutions, such as the Mexican Constitution of 1917, into their legal and historical context.