{
  "id": "repartidor-de-pleytos-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "The Repartidor de pleytos of the Casa de Contratación: an officer paid to allocate lawsuits, and the register he had to keep — libro VIIII título X, leyes viiij, xj and xij",
  "summary": "A salaried officer of the Casa de Contratación did nothing but divide the court's suits among its four notaries, weighted by the kind of case, entering every allocation in a book with the day, month and year and the notary it went to; a notary who thought himself badly served appealed to the President, and one who took a case not allotted to him was fined. Three laws, of 1575 to 1622, and the salary is stated only for crown cases.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "colonial-law",
    "law-of-the-indies",
    "legislation",
    "legal-history",
    "recopilacion",
    "casa-de-contratacion",
    "courts",
    "procedure",
    "notaries",
    "record-keeping",
    "administration",
    "public-administration",
    "accountability",
    "salaries",
    "seville",
    "carrera-de-indias",
    "spanish-empire",
    "sixteenth-century",
    "seventeenth-century"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "casa-de-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "escribanos-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "salarios-de-los-ministros-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "oficios-vendibles-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "carcel-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "examen-y-etica-de-los-abogados-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "escribanos-de-camara-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "derechos-y-conducta-de-los-escribanos-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "arancel-de-los-escribanos-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion-1678"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who decided which notary of the Casa de Contratación got which lawsuit?",
    "Did the Spanish Indies trade court have a written register of case allocation?",
    "What happened if a notary of the Casa de Contratación took a case that had not been allotted to him?",
    "Could a notary of the Casa de Contratación complain about how cases were shared out, and to whom?",
    "How much was the Repartidor de pleytos of the Casa de Contratación paid?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The Casa de Contratación had an officer whose whole function was to allocate lawsuits, and the código names him in the heading of the título. Libro VIIII título X of the Recopilación, in the fourth impression printed at Madrid in 1791 by the widow of Joaquín Ibarra for the Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies, is headed \"DE LOS ESCRIBANOS DE CÁMARA, Y OTROS Escribanos, y Repartidor de la Casa de Contratacion de Sevilla\". Three of its twenty-four laws — ley viiij on the docket, ley xj establishing the Repartidor, and ley xij on his salary — are read here, on the printed folios 122 and 123.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-x-repartidor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The establishing law is ley xj, carried in the margin to Philip II at San Lorenzo on 30 May 1575 and again on 10 October 1577 and 10 October 1585, and it begins with the rule the officer exists to serve: \"todos los pleytos, y negocios, que en la Casa de Sevilla ocurrieren, de qualquier género, y calidad que sean, se repartan entre los quatro Escribanos\". Everything that comes into the court is shared out; nothing is said to be exempt by kind or by importance. The código prints three dates for this law and does not say which clause came from which, so no clause of it can be dated.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-x-repartidor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The allocation is written down, in a dedicated register, item by item. Ley xj requires \"persona diputada, qual convenga, que sea Repartidor\" who shall \"tenga un libro adonde escriba, y asiente todo lo que se repartiere, y á que Escribanos, con dia, mes, y año\". Four fields are specified: what was allotted, to which notary, and the day, month and year. The crown is not asking for a summary at the end of a term; it is requiring a running ledger of who was given which case and when.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-x-repartidor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The allocation is weighted rather than merely rotated, and the law says what it is weighted for. Ley xj orders the Repartidor to divide the business \"dividiendo los partidos, conforme á las calidades de los pleytos, y negocios para que igualmente se haga el repartimiento, y ningun Escribano pueda ser defraudado\". A simple round of one case each would not be equal, because cases differ in what they are worth to the man who writes them; so the código asks for equality of value, not equality of count, and names the harm it is preventing as a notary being defrauded of his share.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-x-repartidor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "A notary who thinks himself badly served has a remedy, and it is summary. Ley xj provides that \"si alguno se agraviare, acuda ante el Presidente, y Jueces Letrados de la Casa, para que determinen breve, y sumariamente\". The allocation is reviewable, by the court's own President and its university-trained judges rather than by the Repartidor's superior in the office, and the standard set for the review is speed.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-x-repartidor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The penalties fall on the notary who disregards the allocation, and they escalate from a fine to the loss of the case. Ley xj orders the notaries to keep the repartimiento \"pena de doce reales por la primera vez; y por la segunda diez y seis ducados, aplicados á los Estrados, y Pobres de la Cárcel, y que el Pleyto se reparta entre los demas\"; and it closes by fining the \"Oficiales que tomaren los pleytos no repartidos á aquel Oficio\" four ducados. Taking a case that is not yours costs the fine and then the case, which is the sanction that actually removes the incentive.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-x-repartidor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The docket has its own law, and it hands the judges a written list every week. Ley viiij, from the Emperor Charles and the Prince Governor at ordinance 72 of the Casa, obliges the notaries to enter in the processes the day of the conclusión for the definitive sentence or for any interlocutory act, and to report the next day for the definitive, on pain of two hundred maravedís the first time — half to the Estrados of the Audiencia and half to the poor of the jail — twelve reales the second, and suspension from the office of notary for one month the third. It then requires that every Saturday they give the Jueces Letrados a list signed with their names \"de los Procesos que pasan en Sala de Justicia, y del dia que los lleváron, pena de seis reales\". The judges are to know each week which files are out and since when.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-x-repartidor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The salary is the weak point of the arrangement, and the código leaves it where it found it. Ley xj establishes the Repartidor \"en la forma, y con el salario que ahora percibe, y goza\" — confirming a pay the law declines to state, which means the office existed in some form before 1575 and that this título gives no figure for the ordinary work. The only figure in the group is ley xij, from Philip IV at Madrid on 23 October 1622, which orders ten thousand maravedís of salary paid to the Repartidor \"por el trabajo, y ocupacion que tiene en los Pleytos Fiscales, consignado en penas de Cámara, y gastos de Justicia de la Casa\". Forty-seven years after the office is confirmed, the one sum the crown writes down is for the cases in which the crown itself is the party.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-x-repartidor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "What a flattering account of these laws would leave out, and the leaves do not. The stated beneficiary of the allocation is the notary and not the litigant: ley xj's own reason ends \"y ningun Escribano pueda ser defraudado\", and the remedy it creates belongs to the aggrieved notary, not to a party who thinks his case went to the wrong office. The allocation is reviewable only inside the Casa, by the same President and judges whose court the four escribanías serve. Ley xij's salary is charged on penas de Cámara and gastos de Justicia — \"de la Casa\", the fines and judicial costs of the Casa itself — so the officer who allocates the crown's cases is paid out of what the court levies in the cases it decides. And the fact that the crown had to enact this at all, three times over between 1575 and 1585 and then pay for it again in 1622, is evidence that cases were not being shared out fairly on their own.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-x-repartidor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "What this entry does not establish. It reads three laws of one título in one impression and says nothing about practice: whether a Repartidor's book survives in any archive, how the \"calidades de los pleytos\" were in fact weighed, whether any notary in fact appealed an allocation, whether anyone was fined the four ducados, or what the unstated salary \"que ahora percibe, y goza\" amounted to. It does not establish when the office was first created; ley xj confirms a pay already being drawn, which implies the office preceded 1575, but the título gives no earlier law and none was looked for. Ordinance 72 of the Casa, cited in ley viiij's margin, was not opened. The dates in the margins are the dates as this impression prints them and were not collated against the 1681 first impression, which this corpus also holds.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-ix-titulo-x-repartidor"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": true,
  "winning_edge": "Written case allocation — a named officer, a register, a rule against picking your own file — is the kind of court administration usually discussed as a modern reform. Three laws printed in the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias show a court of the Spanish crown operating one from 1575, and this entry is the first in this corpus to quote them: a deputed officer charged with the repartimiento, a bound book recording what was allotted, to which notary, and on what day, month and year, a weighting by the kind of case so that the shares come out equal in value and not merely in number, an appeal to the President and the Jueces Letrados decided \"breve, y sumariamente\", and an escalating penalty that ends by taking the case away from the notary who took it unallotted. This entry prints beside them what a flattering account would drop: that the stated beneficiary is the notary and not the litigant, that the remedy belongs to the notary alone, that the officer's one written salary is for crown cases and is charged on the court's own fines, and that a rule enacted three times in ten years is evidence of the abuse it was meant to stop.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-10-25",
  "media": [],
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    "name": "The Repartidor de pleytos of the Casa de Contratación: an officer paid to allocate lawsuits, and the register he had to keep — libro VIIII título X, leyes viiij, xj and xij",
    "description": "A salaried officer of the Casa de Contratación did nothing but divide the court's suits among its four notaries, weighted by the kind of case, entering every allocation in a book with the day, month and year and the notary it went to; a notary who thought himself badly served appealed to the President, and one who took a case not allotted to him was fined. Three laws, of 1575 to 1622, and the salary is stated only for crown cases.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/repartidor-de-pleytos-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-10-25",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, libro VIIII título X \"DE LOS ESCRIBANOS DE CÁMARA, Y OTROS Escribanos, y Repartidor de la Casa de Contratacion de Sevilla\" — leyes viiij, xj and xij whole, on the docket of the Casa's Audiencia and on the Repartidor de pleytos, read on the printed folios 122 and 123. Ley viiij, rubric \"Que los Escribanos asienten la conclusion, y lleven los Procesos, y cada Sábado dén relacion de los entregados\", margin \"El Emperador D. Cárlos, y el Príncipe Gobernador allí. Ordenanza 72\", whose text reads \"SEAN obligados los Escribanos á asentar en los Procesos, y pleytos, que ante ellos pendieren, el dia de la conclusion para la difinitiva, ó para otro qualquier Auto interlocutorio; y habiéndolo asentado, dén cuenta otro dia luego siguiente de la conclusion, para la difinitiva del pleyto, pena de que por la primera vez que no lo hicieren, paguen docientos maravedís, la mitad para los Estrados de la Audiencia, y la otra mitad para los pobres de la Cárcel: y por la segunda vez incurran en pena de doce reales, aplicados en la forma susodicha: y la tercera vez sean suspendidos del oficio de Escribano por tiempo de un mes. Y mandamos que todos los Sábados sean obligados á dar relacion firmada de sus nombres á los Jueces Letrados, de los Procesos que pasan en Sala de Justicia, y del dia que los lleváron, pena de seis reales, con la misma aplicacion.\" Ley xj, rubric \"Que haya en la Casa Repartidor de pleytos con salario\", margin \"D. Felipe II en S. Lorenzo á 30 de Mayo de 1575. Y á 10 de Octubre de 1577. Y á 10 de Octubre de 1585\", whose text reads \"ORdenamos que todos los pleytos, y negocios, que en la Casa de Sevilla ocurrieren, de qualquier género, y calidad que sean, se repartan entre los quatro Escribanos, y que haya persona diputada, qual convenga, que sea Repartidor, en la forma, y con el salario que ahora percibe, y goza; y tenga un libro adonde escriba, y asiente todo lo que se repartiere, y á que Escribanos, con dia, mes, y año, dividiendo los partidos, conforme á las calidades de los pleytos, y negocios para que igualmente se haga el repartimiento, y ningun Escribano pueda ser defraudado. Y mandamos que el repartimiento se guarde, y execute; y si alguno se agraviare, acuda ante el Presidente, y Jueces Letrados de la Casa, para que determinen breve, y sumariamente, y los Escribanos guarden el repartimiento, pena de doce reales por la primera vez; y por la segunda diez y seis ducados, aplicados á los Estrados, y Pobres de la Cárcel, y que el Pleyto se reparta entre los demas: y los Oficiales que tomaren los pleytos no repartidos á aquel Oficio, incurran en pena de quatro ducados.\" Ley xij, rubric \"Que al Repartidor de la Casa se le dén por los pleytos Fiscales diez mil maravedís en penas, y gastos de Justicia\", margin \"D. Felipe IIII en Madrid á 23 de Octubre de 1622\", whose text reads \"MAndamos que al Repartidor de pleytos se le dén, y paguen diez mil maravedís de salario por el trabajo, y ocupacion que tiene en los Pleytos Fiscales, consignado en penas de Cámara, y gastos de Justicia de la Casa.\"",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=t5EbF6Y1EM4C&pg=PA122"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "The Repartidor de pleytos of the Casa de Contratación: an officer paid to allocate lawsuits, and the register he had to keep — libro VIIII título X, leyes viiij, xj and xij"
  }
}