Entre la ley y la justicia: una aproximación a la cultura jurisdiccional castellana del siglo XVI a través de la experiencia de la Casa de la Contratación de Sevilla y del Consejo de Indias

Abstract

What encouraged Castilian society to bring lawsuits before the royal courts of justice, when they were known to be highly inefficient? The answer is be found in the methods used by the judges of the House of Trade (Casa de la Contratación) in Seville and the Council of the Indies (Consejo de Indias) as its court of appeal to settle disputes arising from the trade routes to the Indies (Carrera de Indias). The study focuses on lawsuits relating to the confiscation of supposedly illegal merchandise coming from the Indies. These lawsuits offer an adequate laboratory to test the attitude of judges in the disputes which involved, on the one hand, the royal prosecutor, who represented and defended the economic interests of the king and, on the other, the common litigants, making it possible to determine how the judges understood their role as ministers of equity, a condition that obliged them to administer justice, sometimes even in detriment to the interests of the king.

Keywords

• Ius Commune; jurisdictional culture; House of Trade (Casa de la Contratación); Council of the Indies (Consejo de Indias); Carrera de Indias