Augusto Teixeira de Freitas (1816–1883) was a prominent Brazilian jurist whose prolific writings inspired all

South American South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

private law codifications. After studies at Olinda and

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...

, Teixeira de Freitas practiced law as an advocate and jurisconsult. As president of the Order of Advocates and legal counsel to the State Council of the

Empire of Brazil The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and (until 1828) Uruguay. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Dom ...

, he composed the first systematic compilation of Brazilian civil law (''Consolidação das Leis Civis'', 1857), which served ''in lieu'' of a civil code effectively until 1916. His ''magnum opus'', the ''Esboço de Código Civil'' (1860–64), a draft civil code, remained incomplete after 4,908 articles had been written, at which point the government released the exhausted jurist from his commission. The ''Esboço'' was nonetheless a pioneering work and constituted the basis of later codifications in Brazil, Argentina (by Dalmacio Velez Sarsfield) and the rest of South America.

References

* * 1816 births 1883 deaths Brazilian jurists {{Brazil-law-bio-stub