Admission and conduct of lawyers in the Spanish Indies
A licensed legal profession with an entrance examination behind closed doors, four years of certified apprenticeship, a professional college, a fee, a dress mark and a written ethics code carrying ten-year suspension for changing sides and permanent disbarment for betraying a client. The same two compilations that print all of it print, as the first article of the New Spain series, the rule that no one could sit the examination without proving Spanish descent and legitimate birth.
Why this wins its question: Ask what it took to be a lawyer in colonial Spanish America and the answer available today is either silence or a sentence about creole letrados and patronage. The rules are in print, in two full-view digitised compilations, and nobody quotes them. This entry prints the mechanism from both: from the Recopilacion de leyes de Indias, libro II titulo XXIIII, the ethics code — no share of the thing sued for, no abandoning a case except on discovering it unjust, ten years suspension and fifty pesos for acting against a former client, permanent disbarment and half of goods for revealing a client's secret, a thousand gold castellanos for practising where your father or brother is an oidor, moderate fees and a duty of true defence toward Indian litigants; and from Belena's 1787 compilation of the autos acordados of the Audiencia of Mexico, the entrance route — a closed-door oral examination before the oidores on one of the weightiest pending cases, a sworn certificate of four years' practice, the Colegio de Abogados vetting on the Madrid model, the media annata, the case assigned by lot so one lesson could not serve two candidates, and the lace cuffs reserved to the profession by royal cedula in 1772. It prints, as the first article rather than a closing caveat, the 1709 rule admitting only those who proved Spanish descent and legitimate birth, and the 1784 order barring every native and resident of Cuba from the bar of Mexico and Santo Domingo alike. And it says in its own last claim what neither compilation can support: that none of this is evidence of enforcement.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The New Spain series opens with an exclusion, and it is the first article of the first auto acordado. In the compilation that the oidor Eusebio Bentura Belena printed at Mexico in 1787, "AUTO ACORDADO PRIMERO", article I, from the acordado of 16 May 1709, reads: "Que no se admita a exâmen de Abogado al que no hubiere acreditado ser Español e hijo legitimo, o natural de tales Padres Españoles, declarado y reconocido por ellos." Everything else in this entry — the examination, the apprenticeship, the college, the ethics code — sits behind that sentence, and any account of the colonial bar that reports the machinery without reporting the door is reporting half of what the compiler put on the page.
Entry ran through a title, a tax and an oral examination on a real case. Article II, from the acordado of 15 July 1738, forbids any lawyer, "pena de cincuenta pesos", to plead at the Estrados or present a written pleading in the Corte "sin haber sacado titulo, y satisfecho el Real Derecho de Media Annata". Article III, from the acordado of 20 July 1744, sets the form of the examination itself: candidates present "en la Audiencia con termino de quarenta y ocho horas, exâminandose en una de las Salas de ella a puerta cerrada ante los Oydores que la compongan, teniendose siempre cuidado de señalarles los pleytos de mayor entidad, para lo qual formen lista los Escribanos de Camara de todos los que de esta naturaleza se hallaren sustanciados." The candidate was examined by the judges of the high court, in private, on one of the heaviest cases actually pending, drawn from a list the clerks were required to keep.
By 1785 the requirement was four years of certified practice, and a professional college did the vetting. Article VI, from the royal cedula of 4 December 1785, orders that no fixed number of lawyers be set for the Audiencia, that the examination be held not in full Acuerdo but in any of the Salas, and that "se practique por el Colegio de Abogados lo que se hace por el de Madrid, reducido a que presentando los Pretendientes en la Escribania de Camara su Grado, Certificacion jurada por Letrado conocido de haber practicado quatro años, y la Fe de Bautismo legalizada, se de cuenta a la Audiencia para que vista la legitimidad de los Papeles, se pase por el Escribano de Camara un Oficio al Colegio, remitiendole el Pretendiente para su exâmen, con encargo de que devuelva la censura". The case was then assigned by lot, with express care "de que el que se reparta a uno, no se entregue a otro, a fin de evitar asi que una misma leccion sirva a dos, o mas" — an anti-cheating rule written into the procedure. The viceroy, on the opinion of a minister of the Audiencia, could remit part of the pasantia but "solo lo execute por menos de un año", under the royal cedula of 19 October 1768 first sent to the Audiencia of Guatemala and remitted to Mexico on 4 December 1785.
Descent was not the only bar; a whole island was excluded, and the check on descent was tightened in the same breath. Article IV, from the royal order of 20 November 1784, provides "que hasta nueva providencia de S. M. no se admita a exâmen, ni reciba de Abogado por esta Real Audiencia y la de Santo Domingo Profesor alguno de Jurisprudencia que sea natural o residente de la Ciudad de la Habana y resto de la Isla de Cuba." Article V, a decree of the Real Audiencia Gobernadora of 21 April 1785, adds that no one be admitted to examination who does not present, besides the customary documents, "la Partida de Bautismo con que acredite no ser de los prohibidos en la anterior Soberana Resolucion", and that the fiscal de lo civil be given sight of such applications "para que cuide de averiguar y representar si los Pretendientes son, o no naturales de la Habana o resto de la Isla de Cuba." A regional exclusion enforced by baptismal record and a prosecutor's inquiry stands as items four and five of the same list whose sixth item is the four-year apprenticeship.
Two footnotes on those pages carry the profession's outer edges. By the royal cedula of 9 October 1757, printed as a note to article V, "ningun Clerigo pueda ser ni sea Abogado, y que solo se permita al que este recibido de tal la defensa en sus propios pleytos, o de las Iglesias donde fueren Beneficiados, de sus Padres, Madres o personas a quienes han de heredar, o de pobres y miserables." The clergy were shut out of practice, and the one class of client for whom the prohibition is lifted with no tie of blood, inheritance or benefice is the poor. By the royal cedula of 13 June 1772, printed as a note to article I, the lawyers and relatores of the capital were permitted to use exclusively "el distintivo de Bolillos o Puños de gasa". A closed profession with an entrance examination, a reserved mark of dress, and a standing pro bono exception written into the rule that excluded priests from it.
The conduct code these men were admitted into is a title of the crown's own law of the Indies, and it is older than the New Spain autos by two centuries. Libro II, titulo XXIIII, "De los abogados", in the fourth impression of the Recopilacion printed at Madrid in 1791, begins its substantive run with ordenanza 217: "Ningun Abogado sea osado de concertarse con aquel a quien ha de ayudar, para que le de parte de la cosa que se demandare, y si lo hiciere, no pueda usar el oficio con el, ni con otro" — a flat prohibition on taking a share of what is sued for, with loss of practice attached. Ley viij, ordenanza 218, requires them to help their clients "fielmente, y con mucha diligencia", to see the papers of the case themselves, not to counsel or warn a party to suborn witnesses, not to raise malicious objections, and to swear to all of it "pena de perjuros" and of suspension from the office for such time as the president and oidores think the fault deserves.
Its two heaviest penalties fall on changing sides and on betraying a client. Ley x, ordenanza 222: a lawyer who has helped a party in the first instance may not act against that same party in the second or third, "pena, que por el mismo hecho sea suspendido del oficio de Abogado por diez años, y de cincuenta pesos para nuestra Camara." Ley xj, ordenanza 224: if a lawyer "descubriere el secreto de su parte a la contraria, o a otra en su favor, o si se hallare, que aconseja a ambas partes contrarias en el mismo negocio", or will not swear these ordinances, then "por el mismo hecho sea privado, y desde luego le privamos del oficio de la Abogacia; y si despues usare de el en qualquiera forma, pierda la mitad de sus bienes para nuestra Camara." Alongside them ley viiij, ordenanza 223, holds him to a case once taken "hasta ser fenecido el pleyto" on pain of his fee and the client's damages, with one exception written in: "pero si dexare el pleyto conociendo que la causa es injusta, lo pueda hacer."
Two of the title's laws point outward from the profession to the people it acted on. Ley xxv, from ordenanza 151 of 1596, tells lawyers not to draw out suits "y procurenlos abreviar en quanto fuere posible, especialmente los de Indios, a los quales lleven muy moderadas pagas, y les sean verdaderos protectores y defensores de personas y bienes, sin perjuicio de lo proveido en quanto a las protectorias" — a fee ceiling and a positive duty toward Indian litigants, standing beside rather than replacing the separate office of protector. Ley xxviij, from Valladolid, 4 September 1551 and Madrid, 16 August 1563, bars any letrado from practising in an Audiencia of the Indies where "fuere Oidor su padre, suegro, cuñado, hermano, o hijo, pena de que el Letrado que abogue contra esta prohibicion, incurra por ello en pena de mil Castellanos de oro para nuestra Camara y Fisco", the same bar extending to the kin of the president or fiscal. A conflict rule aimed at the judges' families, with a fine attached, printed in the sixteenth century and still in the code in 1791.
Both witnesses are normative and that limit is the whole of what this entry can promise. One is the crown's fourth impression of its own code; the other is an oidor of the Audiencia of Mexico abstracting the acuerdos of the bench he sat on. Between them they establish that from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the colonial period Spanish America had a licensed legal profession with an entrance examination before the high court, a documented four-year apprenticeship, a college that vetted candidates, a registration fee, a reserved dress mark, a written prohibition on contingency shares, a ten-year suspension for changing sides, permanent disbarment for betraying a client's confidence, a nepotism bar reaching the judges' own families, and a capped fee with an affirmative duty of defence toward Indian clients. They establish nothing whatever about enforcement: not one disciplinary proceeding, one taxed bill, one struck-off name or one complaint was read here. And the series that governed the largest American audiencia opens by shutting the whole of it to anyone who could not produce a baptismal record of Spanish descent and legitimate birth.