This chapter explores a fresh wave of conflicts in the 1790s. These clashes revolved around the relationship of the University of Charcas and the cabildo to the intendant, the audiencia, and the ecclesiastical hierarchies. This process reveals the blatant inability of the higher colonial officials to dictate the terms of public life. The first section deals with the contentious approval of new university statutes. In a society where tradition was the source of law, the university’s faculty created its governing rules at its own discretion, selectively drawing on the regulations of other universities. The second section turns to numerous disputes over municipal matters, which the urban elites treated as a single confrontation over the preservation of municipal freedom and independence, which in turn hinged on the unwavering respect for the majority vote of the cabildo officials. By the turn of the century, open disobedience had become routine, direct, and ideological. The final section shows that it is no coincidence that one of the most penetrating critics of late Spanish colonialism, the Aragonese jurist Victorián de Villava, wrote his devastating treatises on the state of the empire while serving as fiscal (prosecutor) of the audiencia of Charcas.

Law schools flourished in the Byzantine Empire at the beginning of the Middle Ages, notably in Constantinople and Beirut. They taught, in Latin, the law of the Roman Empire, which also regulated the affairs of the Church (see Chapter 9). The reign of Justinian (527–65) brought the new compilations of law later known collectively as the Corpus iuris civilis (see Chapter 13) and soon also a shift of the language of instruction to Greek. Legal education, including teaching of eastern canon law, continued practically as long as the Empire survived, and beyond, producing notable scholars of canon law, such as John Zonaras (fl. early twelfth century) and Theodore Balsamon (d. after 1195) (see Chapter 9).