Abstract

CANDIOTI, Magdalena. “An Era when Citizens saw their Individual Safety Respected.” The Circulation of the Language of Rights in the Buenos Aires post-Revolutionary Courts (1810-1830). Secuencia [online]. 2017, n.98, pp.35-65. ISSN 2395-8464.  https://doi.org/10.18234/secuencia.v0i98.1499.

The article traces the use of the language of rights in the Buenos Aires courts during the first twenty years of revolution. The court records used provide an excellent way of thinking about the spread of this language beyond the elites, by tracing its most common and even popular uses. In the belief that legal cultures are transformed on a daily basis, with the help of changes in citizens’ perception of what their rights are and how they can claim them, this article seeks to show how the values and rights mobilized by litigants and lawyers in the Buenos Aires forum began to be reformulated within the revolutionary context. Although the most novel principles and laws were not always the most effective ones within the sphere of judicial disputes, their circulation cemented the creation of a culture of legal rights, whose future consolidation can only be explained on the basis of these early, faltering steps.

Keywords : political language; legal culture; individual security; courts; Buenos Aires.