Consent, Voluntary Jurisdiction and Native Political Agency in Bartolomé de Las Casas' Final Writings

Abstract

Relying on the principles of Natural law and the medieval juridical glosses on the Ius commune, this study examines Las Casas' final political proposals. It argues that the core of his late writings restores the Roman law concept of Voluntary jurisdiction and applies it to solving the entangled situation of the Indies in which the jurisdictional domains of the Church, the Spanish crown and the Amerindian polities had converged. Consent given freely and without pressure by every individual in Amerindian societies emerges as the only principle that would grant legitimacy to the Spanish presence in the Indies. By laying this conceptual groundwork, Las Casas enabled Amerindian and Spanish intellectuals to think beyond the Ius belli criteria.