Do Clothes Make the Man? Institutionalisation of the Judicial Career in Spain at the End of the Old Regime

Abstract

The regulations of 1783, 1788 and 1799 started the institutionalisation of the judicial career in the Spanish Monarchy. The analysis of these rules permit observing the changes and the limitations of the judicial officials and judges’ ethics during the Enlightenment. The aim was to raise their technical ability, their legal nature, without modifying their moral characterisation. Afterwards, it will be analysed the intellectual production (books, conferences...) to which the regulations would give rise in order to approach reality by means of examples in which the full extent of these measures can be examined in the end.

Keywords

• carrera judicial
• habitus
• absolutismo
• corregidores
• alcaldes mayores