[We have the following announcement. DRE]
On November 10, the Helsinki Legal History Series will reconvene for Gustavo Zatelli, University of Helsinki, to give the lecture “Exploring the British Empire beyond the Common Law: A Comparative Study of the Vice-Admiralty Courts during the Eighteenth Century (New York).” Time: 3 pm – 4.30 pm. Location: Apollon Sali K134. Link for online participation [here]
This paper examines legal pluralism in eighteenth-century British colonial vice-admiralty courts, focusing on how legal actors drew on different legal traditions, particularly the use of civil law, to elaborate their arguments. It presents preliminary findings from an ongoing research project funded by the Research Council of Finland, which compares legal argumentation used in the Vice-Admiralty Courts of Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Jamaica up to 1775. Within this comparative framework, the paper concentrates on records from New York, where archival research is currently most advanced.
Through an analysis of legal argumentation, the paper investigates how the interpretation and application of imperial admiralty law occurred in colonial contexts. It asks how and why different legal traditions were invoked, and what these practices reveal about the relationship between colonial interests and imperial authority. The project’s central hypothesis is that vice-admiralty jurisdiction provided an institutional environment in which participants could strategically draw on different legal traditions to advance claims, articulate expectations about rights and obligations, and negotiate competing interests. By examining these practices, the paper seeks to clarify the relationship between legal pluralism and colonial governance, while considering how the preliminary findings from New York can inform the project’s broader comparative analysis.
Gustavo Zatelli Correa is a legal historian and Academy Researcher at the Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki. His research focuses on comparative colonial legal history, the circulation of legal knowledge, and the history of administrative law and police regulation. His current project, funded by the Research Council of Finland, compares vice-admiralty courts in eighteenth-century British colonies. He previously worked on the University of Helsinki’s Comparing Early Modern Colonial Laws (CoCoLaw) project and has held research appointments in Frankfurt and Vienna. He obtained his PhD by the University of Brasília, Brazil.
