Truth Finding and the Mirage of Inquisitorial Process

This paper argues that there were multiple forms of heresy implemented by the Church to control opposing ideas and knowledge in the Middle Ages. The term “heresy” shift meanings for its original conception to include all beliefs that were opposed to official Church doctrine, including magic and sorcery. The inquisitorial process was implemented as a response to the laity’s attempts to interpret Church doctrine for themselves alongside their traditional beliefs. As he concept of heresy changed, so too did the Church’s view of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. Before the inquisitorial process became widespread, magic was considered an error that could be fixed through a penitential process. By the time of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the church had decided on what constituted heretical behaviour, and who had the right to punish heretics.

This article outlines the construction of the role of the defence lawyer in French pre-trial criminal procedure and the factors which have both influenced and constrained its recent evolution. Beginning with an examination of the changing ways in which the pre-trial defence role is characterised by the text of the law and the official discourse surrounding it, the article then provides an empirically based account of the ways in which the defence avocat is perceived and accommodated by the key legal actors, namely the police and the judicial officers charged with the supervision of criminal investigations. A careful unpicking of the nature of their resistance to any effective defence role reveals fundamental weaknesses in the functioning of the current inquisitorial structure and, paradoxically, suggests that there is more rather than less room for the defence to play a role within French pre-trial criminal procedure.

17th century (ortho)graphic practices in História do Futuro by Father António Vieira: This text analyses Father António Vieira’s spelling practices in História do Futuro based on a new conservative manuscript reading. Written, for the most part, between 1664 and 1665, the fragments of the História do Futuro that have come down to us, attached to Vieira’s inquisitorial process, are working texts, unpolished versions, which, therefore, may eventually reveal some marks of the “classic” period of Portuguese. On the other hand, taking into account that Vieira’s training in spelling falls within the “etymological” period and that his reputation places him among the “good authors”, also in terms of spelling, we seek to identify the conservative and innovative marks and, eventually, the manifestation of an individual practice, which, as is known, was, in Vieira’s time and until the beginning of the 20th century, a notorious trend, particularly among great writers.

We first study the editions, translations, and commentaries of the Bible published during the 16th century, both from the original languages into Latin and the revised Vulgate editions in both the Catholic and Protestant scopes. We focus on the Bible commentaries by the French Hebraist, not a translator, Francisco Vatablo, a Catholic and professor of Hebrew at the Royal College of France for a decade and a half (1530-1547). These commentaries take into account the original Hebrew language as well as the commentaries of medieval Hebrew exegetes. Edited and adapted by R. Stephano (first Catholic and later Protestant) they appear in the three editions (1545, 1567-57, and 1584, Salamanca) of the so-called Vatablo Bible, central to the academic work of our three Salamancan Hebraists (Grajal, Cantalapiedra, and Fray Luis de León) and in their inquisitorial process.

Tribunals and specialised courts with inquisitorial powers are now fairly common in Australia and appellate courts have begun to insist that in certain circumstances the powers be used. By “inquisitorial powers” is meant powers which enable the adjudicator to take the initiative in eliciting evidence and formulating legal arguments, and to control the way in which a case is presented. The Australian Committee on Administrative Discretions believed that it would be appropriate for their proposed administrative review tribunal to make use of an “investigative or inquisitorial process in most cases”. There have even been calls for the use of some inquisitorial procedures in ordinary courts of law. A radical change in the ordinary courts seems at present to be impracticable. On the other hand the Administrative Appeals Tribunal is still in a position to set its own pattern of development. It has been given almost carte blanche as to procedure and some wide inquisitorial powers. For the last six years it has been experimenting with the use of these powers, and some of its pre-trial procedures have already aroused interest. The Federal Court in its jurisdiction under the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 (Cth) is given power to exert far greater control over the conduct of proceedings than is normal in an adversary system.

This is a study of conflict between reformists and conservatives in the Soviet legal community. The conflict is explored in the context of the continuing debate over what role, if any, defense counsel should play at the pre-trial stage of the criminal process. Lying at the juncture of law, politics, and history, the study has three major aims: to illustrate the development of policy and practice on the right to counsel in Russia and the Soviet Union; to assess the effects of the legislative reforms of the Khrushchev era on legal behavior; and to extend our understanding of policy conflict in the Soviet Union from the leadership level to professional groups and from the realm of policy making to policy implementation.' For too long students of group politics in the Soviet Union have focused on the debate preceding reforms and have failed to scrutinize the continuing group conflict at the implementation stage. This account of attempts to expand the right to counsel in pre-trial proceedings places legislative implementation at the center of the analysis. Over the past century no question of Russian or Soviet criminal procedure has been debated with greater frequency or intensity than the dispute over the participation of counsel in pre-trial proceedings. These proceedings, conducted by state investigators, are at the heart of the criminal process in all Continental-style systems. The presumption of the impartiality of the pre-trial investigation, implicit in the inquisitorial process, renders the judicial hearing less a fullblown trial in the Anglo-American tradition than a judicial review of the results of the crimrinal investigation. This has been especially

Background and Objectives: The first inquisitorial processes were developed against Muslims and Jews. Then, they focused on women, especially those dedicated to care. Progressively, they were linked to witchcraft and sorcery due to their great assistance, generational and empirical knowledge. The health historiography of the 15th–18th centuries still has important bibliographic and interpretive gaps in the care provided by women. The main objective was to analyse the care provided by midwives in the legislative and socio-sanitary context of New Castile, in the inquisitorial Spain of the 15th–18th centuries. Materials and Methods: A historical review was conducted, following the Dialectical Structural Model of Care. Historical manuals, articles and databases were analysed. Results: The Catholic Monarchs established health profession regulations in 1477, including midwives. However, all legislations were annulled by Felipe II in 1576. These were not resumed until 1750. Midwives assumed a huge range of functions in their care commitment (teaching, care and religion) and were valued in opposing ways. However, many of them were persecuted and condemned by the Inquisition. They used to accompany therapeutic action with prayers and charms. Midwives were usually women in a social vulnerability situation, who did not comply with social stereotypes. Conclusions: Midwives, forerunners of current nursing and health sciences, overcame sociocultural difficulties, although they were condemned for it. Midwives achieved an accredited title, which was taken from them for two centuries. They acted as health agents in a society that demanded them while participating in a “witch hunt”.

La documentación generada por el Santo Oficio en Iberoamérica nos permite reconstruir vidas singulares que iluminan el pasado histórico de forma diferente. Tras ser acusado de proposiciones, Tebanillo González fue protagonista de un proceso inquisitorial entre 1789 y 1790 a pesar de los indicios y fama de loco. Su caso, poco frecuente, pues los dementes no eran juzgados por el Santo Oficio, nos permite conocer las relaciones de un personaje marginal con el resto de la sociedad y las iniciativas religiosas para controlar una mente desordenada.

This thesis identifies increased opportunities for locating the agency of deponents in inquisitorial records, particularly Doat 25 and 26. Recent scholarship has tended to emphasise the construction of depositions by and through inquisitorial process, and therefore to consider depositions as records of inquisition and inquisitors. I argue, instead, that some of these documents can be treated as memory records. Examining deponents' reported memories, I argue that inquisitorial interviews provoked opportunities for deponents to craft narratives of personal history, and of communal interactions. This discussion demonstrates that despite the strong influence of inquisition in their production, some inquisitorial records retain significant value as evidence for social history, especially of changes in deponents' constructions of identity and community.

Bringing together over 260 authors from 50 countries, the Encyclopedia of Comparative Law is the most comprehensive reference work in the field of comparative law. New entries will be added every month and PDF downloads will be available once the Encyclopedia is complete.

'Wall to Wall: Law as Culture in Latin America and Spain' comprises interventions from a wide array of scholars based in the US, Spain, and Latin America, exploring the encounter of Hispanophone cultures and the law. Its contributors delineate a fraught relationship of complicity, negotiation, and outright confrontation covering five centuries and a truly global landscape, from Inquisitorial processes at the onset of the Spanish Empire to last-ditch plans to preserve it in the 19th century Philippines, to the challenges to contemporary articulations of the nation-state in Catalonia. Beyond single, specialized time-period and national cultures, 'Wall to Wall' embraces and showcases the heterogeneity of the field, covering both well-known territory (Argentina, Mexico, Spain) and often-neglected cultures (Venezuela, Philippines, and indigenous communities in the Yucatan area), as well as problems that cannot be narrowed down to the nation-state (exile, independence processes, non-state laws, translation of foreign cultures). Contributors include: Aurélie Vialette, Daniel Aguirre-Oteiza, Daniela Dorfman, María Fernanda Lander, Gloria Elizabeth Chacón, Iván Trujillo, Benjamin Easton, Pauline de Tholozany, Lauren G.J. Reynolds, Ignasi Gozalo-Salellas, and Gabriela Balcarce. The chapters included foreground the conceptual diversity of the field, in dialogue with issues in literary and visual culture, (post-)colonialism, race, nationalism, gender, and class. Not only do they place vernacular objects in dialogue with current international concepts and methods, but these essays also aim to advance an autonomous conceptual and theoretical work-based approach. Its chapters aspire to enter a global discussion around the state-centered aspiration to shape culture and the many literary and cultural practices that escape it; researchers of those issues and Latin American and Iberian studies will find new venues to rethink their global archive.

This essay reveals the counter-history of the ‘countervoyage’ in the Luso-Atlantic world. Scholarly attention has recently concentrated on the Middle Passage, the westward West African-New World voyage of enslavement for millions of Africans. However, this article exposes constant captive maritime mobilities sailing east towards Europe from the Americas, conceptualized as the countervoyage, and explores how archival silences have obscured the multiplicity of captive geographic mobilities that resisted pre-defined routes for Black bodies. It examines how Black female place-making redefined the technology of Portuguese ocean-going vessels through corporeal positioning and use of Luso-Atlantic maritime space. Employing import tax collections, Inquisitorial processes and petitions for legal marriage to locate Afro-Brazilian women living in Portugal, this article argues that the countervoyage was particularly transformative in the lives of enslaved women in the Luso-Atlantic world, enabling them to chart alternate cartographies of transimperial diasporic activity. It concludes by considering how we might begin theorizing the counter-history of countervoyages to form a future conceptual and analytical tool (the ‘counter-voyage’) that effectively utilizes South Atlantic epistemologies for broader application.

Allan Lind, John Thibaut, Laurens Walker, A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Effect of Adversary and Inquisitorial Processes on Bias in Legal Decision Making, Virginia Law Review, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Mar., 1976), pp. 271-283

In contemporary laws on criminal procedure in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as in the region, the penetration of elements of Anglo-Saxon law and the uncritical acceptance of the "fruit of the poisonous tree" rule in the matter of evidentiary law are visible. The look into the future is nevertheless based on the historical development of the final stage of judicial fact-finding, where it is noticeable that the inquisitorial procedure of post-classical Roman law was transferred to ecclesiastical, canon law, which greatly influenced the development of evidentiary law in continental law. Therefore, the question arises, what is the hierarchy of the value of evidence in the Roman procedure and in the later Middle Ages, when the church itself forbids priests from participating in the most widespread forms of the so-called. "God's judgments" or ordals (Lateran council from 1215). The paper analyzes the contrasts between the free evaluation of evidence and the system of legally binding or formal evaluation of evidence of the inquisition procedure, whereby the church tried to evaluate evidence for the conversion of sinners by developing the spirit of mercy, pity and compassion. Likewise, with St. Thomas Aquinas, sins bear the names of delicts of Roman law (furtum, seditio, homicidium...), while the inquisitorial process, as a judicially organized investigation, dominating the continental legal culture and jurisprudence until the middle of the 18th century, brings legal rules for the evaluation of evidence.

Lights and Shadows: The Inquisitorial Process against the Jesuit Congregation of Nuestra Señora de la Luz (1758–76)