The legal pluralism in the Brazilian experience : a critique of Raymundo Faoro’s monist historiographyThis article investigates the reasonableness of historiographical interpretations that reduce the Brazilian legal experience, from the colonial period onward, to the law-making will of the sovereign State. To examine this perspective, which found its most well-defined expression in Raymundo Faoro's work Os donos do poder (“The Owners of Power”), this article conducts a long-term analysis of Brazilian colonial and imperial history in search of institutions and centers of power, whether public or private, that escape the monist framework. It is concluded that the Brazilian legal experience was highly complex, pluralistic, and replete with local laws, which requires legal historiography to adapt its research agenda and methodologies.
Keywords:
Legal history; Legal pluralism; Brazilian Empire; Colonial Brazil; Raymundo Faoro