This panel explores the interaction between legal norms, sovereignty formation, and geopolitical dynamics in nineteenth-century Latin America. During this period, new republics faced the simultaneous challenges of consolidating internal authority and projecting it outward in a rapidly shifting international environment. Legal norms—constitutional, civil, penal, administrative, and consular—became key instruments through which states defined their international position and negotiated their place within an emerging hemispheric order.

Argument

Throughout the 19th century, Latin American states simultaneously faced the challenge of constructing their internal sovereignty while projecting it outward in a rapidly changing international environment. Legal norms—constitutional, civil, penal, administrative, and consular— did not merely organize emerging domestic political orders; they also became decisive instruments for defining each government’s international position. Recent developments in German legalhistorical scholarship encourage us to move beyond the classical understanding of law as a stable and coherent normative corpus, and to approach it instead as a constellation of situated practices shaped by multiple actors, institutions, and transregional circulations. From this perspective, the professionalization of diplomatic and consular services, the regulation of foreignness, the drafting of extradition treaties, or the definition of competencies among branches of government appear as processes in which legal norms were constructed, negotiated, and reinterpreted in direct interaction with regional and global geopolitical contexts.

Complementarily, the new approaches developed within Italian legal-historical scholarship— centered on the historicity of legal categories and their close entanglement with the languages of power—help illuminate how concepts such as sovereignty, jurisdiction, citizenship, or representation were reformulated in the Latin American world under the combined pressure of internal expectations and the demands of international politics. These transformations manifested themselves in constituent debates, in the administration of disputed territories, in discussions over river navigability, and in the adoption of doctrines of the law of nations. The constant interaction between internal and external norms, between legal structures and diplomatic practices, reveals Latin America as a privileged laboratory of legal production, where state-building and international insertion advanced in close interdependence. This integrated approach allows us to rethink regional geopolitics not merely as a field of forces, but as a dynamic normative space shaped by global intellectual, technical, and juridical circulations.

1. Construction of Territory and Border Delimitation

• The impact of representative mechanisms and institutional configurations on territorial construction, particularly in borderlands or disputed areas where legal and diplomatic practices directly shaped the expansion or consolidation of sovereignty.
• Divergent interpretations of the Law of nations and Public international law regarding issues such as river navigability, transit rights, and the shared or exclusive control over of local powers (cities, provinces, ports).
• Naturalization of foreigners as part of state and territorial formation, revealing tensions between internal sovereignty, legal order, and international positioning.

2. Relations Between States and the International Legal Order

• The influence of constitutional languages on the definition of foreign policy, as constitutions redefined categories such as sovereignty, citizenship, and jurisdiction, shaping the institutional architecture of republican diplomacy.
• Debates over the distribution of competencies among branches of government in formulating, negotiating, and determining international policy.
• The internationalization of domestic criminal law through extradition and asylum treaties, showing how internal juridical categories acquired diplomatic and geopolitical significance.
• The various readings of public international law—particularly regarding circulation, commerce, mobility, and juridico-political authority—that shaped bilateral and multilateral relations among Latin American states throughout the nineteenth century, configuring a contested regional order.

3. Diplomatic and Consular Professionalization

• The regulation of legal and consular matters in Latin American legislation, alongside the gradual standardization of diplomatic and consular practice.
• The norms that structured the professionalization of diplomatic and consular corps, their training trajectories, and their international networks.

Format of Proposals

We invite researchers working on these themes to submit paper proposals to daniel.rojas@univgrenoble-alpes.fr for this panel, which will take place in Turin from 20 to 22 May 2026, as part of the First Italian Congress of Latin American Studies.

Proposals may address, from various perspectives, the relationship between law, sovereignty, and geopolitics in nineteenth-century Latin America and may align with the thematic axes outlined below.

The maximum length of proposals is 500 words.

Proposals should be sent to daniel.rojas@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr before 6 February 2026 at 24:00 (Paris GMT+1).

Timeline

• 6 February 2026: Deadline for submitting proposals.
• 13 February 2026: Announcement of accepted proposals.
• 20–22 May 2026: First Italian Congress of Latin American Studies, Turin.

Scientific Committee

TBA

Selected Bibliography

Duve, Thomas. European Legal History – Global Perspectives. Munich: Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, 2020.

Duve, Thomas. Global Legal History: A Methodological Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

Becker Lorca, Arnulf. Mestizo International Law: A Global Intellectual History, 1842–1933.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Sordi, Bernardo. Stato e Costituzione. Una storia europea. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2017.

Sordi, Bernardo. Diritto pubblico e diritto internazionale nell’età della codificazione. Florence: Olschki, 2002.