A look at the blending of Spanish and British law. Something I know little of.
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Some of the most significant development.s in Texas legal history occurred during the period of the Republic of Texas. One of them, the blending of the civil law systems of Spain and France with the common law system of Anglo-America, produced a unique legal system peculiar t.o Texas. The Spanish civil law evolved from the grafting of Roman law, principally the Justinian Code, upon the customs and usages of the Visigoths as codified in the Codex Eurici. This draft, the Visigothic Code (Fuero Juzgo), issued in Castilian form in 693, withstood seven centuries of Moorish rule and six revisions, the latest in 1805 (the Novisima Recopilacion). It remained the law of the Spanish world through the middle ages and, in large measure, to the time of Spanish colonization of Texas in the Seventeenth Century.1 It was transmitted to Texas during more than a century of Spanish colonial government and administration under the general direction of the Leyes de los Reino!; de las Indias,2 and more than a decade of Mexican rule.
The French civil law also evolved from the Roman codes, principally the Institutes of Gaius and Justinian; from the glosses of such French commentators as Domat, Pothier, and D'Aquesseau; from Frankish customs and usages, especially those of the north of France; and from decisions of the parle1'nent of Paris. From those sources a Napoleonic commission promulgated the Code Civil in 1814; and from those same sources French settlers in Louisiana evolved their civil codes.3 After the Louisiana Purchase the United States generously allowed the people of Louisiana to retain their codes, and as a result many Texans, immigrants from the Louisiana territory, were thoroughly familiar with their contents.
The English common law developed from custom and usage through the work of the common law courts of Exchequer, Common Pleas, and King's Bench. Though influenced slightly by Roman law from time to time, it was never codified; but in later times it was supplemented by legislation enacted by the British Parliament. The common law was brought to the United States by British settlers, primarily in the form of Blackstone's Commentaries. It was transmitted to Texas after 1820 through the agency of lawyers trained in its precepts in the American states of the Old Southwest.'
