Power and Family Law in Luso-Brazilian Thought: Enlightenment and the circulation of juridical ideas and legal culture

Abstract

This text focuses on juridical ideas, with reference to the issue of power and discipline in the family in the transition to modernity. It analyses the range of juridical and political ideas permeating the heated debates that have taken place in Portugal and Brazil, when much was made to modernize civil codes (19th century). It considered firstly the process in which Enlightenment ideas circulated in the field of Law, and it focussed on potestas and the ideological conditionings of the discussion over civil marriage, which accompanied the secularisation and modernization process in Portugal and Brazil. This issue seems to have constituted the touchstone for the conservative resistance that hampered the reforms. These subjects have assumed enormous importance today, at the turn of the millennium, in view of the reform of civil code in Brazil and the debate on abortion and same sex marriage. The empirical research is based in the bibliographical production published during the 19th century (theses, books, and articles in juridical journals) in Brazil and Portugal.