Public Opinion and Legal History: Method, Episode, Detail

Abstract

As a historical source, public opinion deserves more attention, especially in the field of legal history. Hence, I present in this article a way to work with the sources of public opinion in legal history researches. To this end, I selected a case that occurred in 1888, in the province of Paraná, to be studied through the micro-historical approach proposed by Carlo Ginzburg. This guideline fits the episodic time and the investigation of minor cases. Marginal and seemingly irrelevant, the particular episodes have to be unveiled to reveal the general issues that constitute them. Rebuilt from the discussion in the provincial press, the dispute for the regional legislature of Paraná circulated in the public opinion tribunal. By doing so, the public discussion reached higher levels of the tribunal, especially the national parliament. In the congressional ground, other similar cases came to light from different provinces. Grounding methodological inferences about public opinion, the case study allows to conclude that the provincial dispute implied a general issue of Imperial Brazil, which was an entailment of the crisis of the constitutional project for provincial autonomy.