Capacidad jurídica y estatus personal: un análisis histórico-comparado de la personalidad jurídica (siglo XIX y principios del XX)

A conventional view holds that the liberal State fostered the unity of a ‘single subject’ in Private Law —one who interacted with other legally equal individuals under symmetrical conditions. This abstract and uniform subject was apparently created through the repeal of Ancien Régime laws and the unification of personal statutes by legislative mechanisms such as codification.
My research argues that this was not the case in most Latin American and European experiences. Instead, a variety of statuses and types of legal personhoods persisted, maintaining legal differentiation between individuals. Those granted limited legal capacity included married women, indigenous peoples (within sovereign states or under imperial rule), foreigners, persons subject to bankruptcy or civil death (due to criminal conviction or ecclesiastical status), enslaved individuals, among others. I examine how specific rules regarding legal capacity developed and how actors used existing laws to challenge these rules and, in doing so, transformed the law.

Covering the period between 1850 and 1920, I seek to analyse the historical configurations of legal capacity by integrating two strands: a genealogy of conceptual changes (and the discursive foundations that upheld them), and local case studies taken from Latin America and continental Europe.