The António Manuel Hespanha Digital Archive aims to make available the electronic edition of the main Portuguese legal literature of the 19th century – first half of the 20th century.
The selection of works favoured those produced in the academic sphere, although the collection also includes other legal materials of a different nature, complementary to the above (codes, directories, collections of legislation or “loose” legislation, collections of court decisions, parliamentary debates on legal matters, some works of legal dissemination).
Produced under the auspices of CEDIS and research projects also funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), other institutions have also contributed to its realisation by providing the originals to be reproduced and digitised.
These include the National Library, the João Paulo II Library of the Portuguese Catholic University, the Library of the Legal Institute of the University of Coimbra, the Library of the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon, the General Library of the University of Coimbra, the Municipal Library of Figueira da Foz, the Library and Parliamentary Historical Archive and the Library of the Ministry of Finance.
To date, hundreds of doctrinal works, draft legislation, parliamentary debates, pieces of legislation and around 20 volumes of case law have been published, to which must be added dozens of indexes, directories, constitutional texts and foreign sources. This collection will be expanded in the future, either by publishing works that have already been digitised but not yet processed, or by selecting other works and materials to be digitised. Some of the biographies of the authors of the published works have yet to be finalised, although most are already available with the respective work.
This project was coordinated by António Manuel Hespanha and Cristina Nogueira da Silva, researchers at CEDIS and professors at NOVA School of Law.
The work of processing the works, as well as drawing up the respective bio-bibliographical records, was carried out by students from NOVA School of Law from 2006 to the present day (among others, Joana Mota, Jonas Gentil, Luís Cabral de Oliveira, Ana Paula Lourenço, Raquel Galvão, Raquel Lemos, Tiago Cristóvão, Vera Martins, Soraia Gonçalves, João Amoedo, Anilda Veiga, Verónica Catana, Fátima Dias, Ana Filipa Silva, Janaína Bueno).
Click here to access the Archive.