This article analyses arguments used in an 1866 Brazilian freedom suit to highlight a substantive legal perspective. Historians of Brazilian slavery law have given attention to the politics of freedom suits, largely disregarding the role of law in their origins, developments, and outcomes. By looking at legal arguments, we show how law and political views mutually framed each other. We focus on the impact of 19th century legal modernizations in the distinction and contradictions between the law of status and property law, the legal translations of freedom, and the uses of arguments based on codes, natural law, and pragmatic considerations about the judiciary's role in a slave society. This is a micro-history of a suit that, with the help of other 19th-century freedom suits and legal doctrine, allows us to move up and down different historical scales to understand law's centrality in the political perpetuation and demise of slavery in Brazil.

ResumoEste artigo se baseia na análise qualitativa de processos judiciais da primeira década do século XX -encontrados no Arquivo Nacional -para reconstruir o papel de práticas, instituições e conceitos jurídicos na resistência e adaptação dos proprietários do Rio de Janeiro às reformas urbanas de Pereira Passos e Rodrigues Alves. Como fontes complementares, são empregados anais parlamentares e legislação, para entender as bases legais das reformas; livros e revistas jurídicas, para estudar a evolução dos conceitos jurídicos relevantes, como o de "propriedade"; e jornais, para contextualizar e acessar aspectos extra-jurídicos dos litígios, ou seja, aquilo que não aparece nos autos processuais.Palavras-chave: reformas urbanas, direito de propriedade, Rio de Janeiro. AbstractThis article makes a qualitative analysis of judicial records from the first decade of the 20th century -found in the National Archives -in order to reconstruct the role of legal practices, institutions, and concepts in the resistance and adaptation of Rio de Janeiro's property owners to the urban reforms made by Pereira Passos and Rodrigues Alves. We use as complementary sources: parliamentary debates and legislation, to understand the reforms' legal bases; legal books and journals, to study the evolution of relevant concepts, such as "property"; and newspapers, to contextualize and access extra-legal aspects of lawsuits, i.e., what does not appear in court records.

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