Women before Castilian courts: Old Regime justice action and penal law uses

Abstract

Throughout analyzing criminal pardon petitions to the king, this article studies, first, social participation for the final solution of every penal lawsuit; second, justice determinations and, lastly, public peace rebuilding forms and processes. This research shows varieties of justice social uses. Differently to traditional ideas on Old Regime justice shape, this article explores empirical evidences and gives another face of it. According to these documents Old Regime Spanish penal justice was socially participated and negotiated between the private parties in conflict one another and between everyone and the court. As a result, every penal case solution, what it is called here justice action, was formed by an authentic and complex combination of social and institutional forces and pressures. Every justice action integrated not only penal principles and judicial practices, but also by vigorous ethical values that were latent in the social arena.