M. C. Mirow, Florida International University College of Law, has posted Spanish Law and Its Expansion, which is forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of European Legal History, ed. Heikki Pihlajamaki, Markus D. Dubber, and Mark Godfrey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018):This chapter provides an overview of the legal aspects of Spain's enterprise in the Americas. It addresses the uses of law in discovery, exploration and conquest; Castilian law before its expansion to new territories; the use of law to justify conquest; slavery and indigenous labour; institutions; sources of law; legal actors; and Spanish law after independence. It also presents some of the present debates surrounding the nature and construction of derecho indiano.
