A conceptual history of Argentinean constitutionalism

Volume 26 of the Global Perspectives on Legal History out now

Constitutional language emerged out of the interaction of legal theory, political philosophy, and historical narratives. By analyzing the counter-concepts of constitution and arbitrariness, the book explores the logic behind this discourse in 19th-century Argentina. It examines the rupture between the traditional knowledge of ius commune and modern law in the shift from arbitrium iuris to the preeminence of written law enacted by the state. In his conceptual legal history, Agustín Casagrande argues that the narrowing of the concept of arbitrium to arbitrariness was central to the formation of constitutional law’s conception of the political order. This rupture went hand-in-hand with the establishment of new political imaginaries in independent Argentina including autocratic caudillos and suggestible masas. Revealing these emotional conceptions which guided constitutional praxis enables the dialogue between the history of law as written by historians and as written by constitutionalists.

Agustín E. Casagrande is Professor of Legal Sociology in the Law Faculty of the Universidad Nacional de la Plata (UNLP) and Professor of the History of Western Law in the School of Humanities of the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM), Argentina. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Excellence Cluster “Normative Ordnungen” at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt (2018–2019).