In the colonial courtrooms of the Amazon, Indigenous voices did more than defend. They redefined the meaning of freedom. André Luís Bezerra Ferreira uncovers how Native communities used memory, kinship, and oral tradition as powerful legal tools to challenge colonial rule. Drawing from overlooked archives like the Livro de Assentos of the Junta das Missões, his work shows that Indigenous peoples were not passive subjects but active negotiators of law and status. Courts became spaces of struggle where terms like ‚captive‘, ‚slave‘, and ‚free‘ were constantly reinterpreted through Indigenous knowledge systems. Oral histories, rituals, and relational ties anchored claims to liberty and protection in a legal world built to exclude them.

This new volume in the Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte explores how core legal concepts - such as judgement, jurisdiction, law, and justice - took shape in the dialogue between legal scholarship and moral theology. Focusing on the legal system of Hispano-America (derecho indiano), Orazio Condorelli traces key developments in the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical power, with a particular emphasis on the institutions that structured this relationship in the Spanish overseas territories from the 16th to the 18th century.

Submissions are now open for a workshop on the Mixed Courts of Egypt, to be held on 23–24 February 2026 at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory. Organized by Dr Michel Erpelding and Aya Bejermi, the event invites reflection on an institution that stood at the crossroads of empire, international law, and everyday justice. Established through treaties between Egypt and 14 Western powers, the Mixed Courts operated for over seven decades with foreign judges and French-inspired legal codes. Their legacy stretches from Cairo to Strasbourg, and still prompts fresh questions today.