‘Juicio / Judgment and procedure (DCH)’

This essay intends to trace the medieval roots of derecho canónico indiano, in order to show how the themes of judgment and jurisdiction, law and justice took shape in a constant dialogue between legal science and moral theology. The peculiar institutional situations in which the experience of the derecho indiano developed require attention to be directed to the relations and conflicts between secular and ecclesiastical authorities, in a system in which the respective spheres of power were delimited by flexible boundaries, which left room for matters of mixed jurisdiction. The protection of miserabiles personae was a field of jurisdictional competition and potential conflicts. The Indios were included in this category, which was privileged by canon law and secular law. One aspect of their legal protection consisted in the possibility of accessing a simplified judgment according to the form of the summary judicial procedure. The reciprocal immanence between judgement, justice and trial leads the discourse on the jurisdictional remedies, from the appeal to the recurso de fuerza, which was a peculiar expression of the “regalistic” approach to the relations between secular and ecclesiastical powers.