THE TYPES, THE INK AND TOGA: LEGAL DEBATES ON FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IN THE BRAZILIAN EMPIRE

Based primarily on legal treatises, press, and nineteenth-century historiography, this article analyzes the effects of judicial reforms in early 1840s Brazil on the regulation of print production and circulation during the Empire. By emphasizing the political moderation and thematic diversity of periodicals in the Second Reign, the first historians of the Brazilian press overlooked the legal and institutional impacts that accompanied this process. Focusing on the controversy between jurist Braz Florentino Henriques de Souza and his former student Manoel Januário Bezerra Montenegro, the study investigates how courts operated not only as instances of law enforcement but also as arenas to produce legal meaning. Bezerra Montenegro’s work is examined to reveal the interpretive instability and procedural obstacles that characterized press-related trials. The article argues that the so-called “judicial anarchy” did not constitute a deviation from the norm, but rather expressed a legal system in dispute, in which the meanings of freedom of expression were continuously renegotiated. By bridging the fields of legal history and press history, the article contributes to a broader understanding of the tensions surrounding citizenship, the circulation of ideas, and the control of speech in nineteenth-century Brazil.

KEYWORDS:
freedom of the press; legal history; Brazilian Empire; censorship; jury trials