Reflections on the Circulation of Normative Models and Legal Works in the 1936 Argentine Civil Code Draft on Possession

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the process of circulation of normative models and legal theories between Europe and Latin America. It analyzes the circulation of the German possessory model in the Argentinian legal experience between the enactment of the Civil Code of 1869 and the Civil Code Draft of 1936. We argue that the prominence of possession in nineteenth-century local legal culture and practices both conditioned and encouraged the reception of this model. The criticisms that arose at the beginning of the twentieth century regarding the liberal property law of the Civil Code were channelled, in the Civil Code Draft of 1936, through an expansion of the protection of possession to situations not previously contemplated, such as rural and urban leaseholds. German law, which served among other things, as the basis for this legal innovation, was adapted to specific legal traditions operating in provincial regulations.