The Legal Profession in Times of Change
(2025) SOLM02 20251Department of Sociology of Law
- Abstract
- This thesis investigates the legal professionals in Spain during the transitional period from the ancien régime to the liberal state, a period marked by institutional rupture, ideological conflict, and social reconfiguration. The study has the primary aim to understand how the legal professionals contributed, perceived, and resisted the extensive legal changes that took place approximately two centuries ago. The study additionally aims examining how all the developments that took place affected the legal profession itself, its identity, and the career prospects of the legal professionals.
When it comes to the methodology, the study adopts a sociological approach, analyzing diverse secondary sources through a theoretical framework... (More) - This thesis investigates the legal professionals in Spain during the transitional period from the ancien régime to the liberal state, a period marked by institutional rupture, ideological conflict, and social reconfiguration. The study has the primary aim to understand how the legal professionals contributed, perceived, and resisted the extensive legal changes that took place approximately two centuries ago. The study additionally aims examining how all the developments that took place affected the legal profession itself, its identity, and the career prospects of the legal professionals.
When it comes to the methodology, the study adopts a sociological approach, analyzing diverse secondary sources through a theoretical framework developed by the Spanish historian Suárez Verdeguer. He distinguished three broad sociological tendencies during the transitional period, namely the conservatives, the innovators, and the renovators. This theoretical framework is operationalized in the study to categorize key figures, and to interpret different orientations of the Spanish legal professionals of the time. The study aims to provide a novel contribution by reinterpreting previously existing research and analyzing these sociologically. This sociological approach is additionally the research gap that aims to be filled.
The findings demonstrate that the legal profession was far from being a monolithic group, rather the group was characterized by its internal fragmentation and shifting loyalties. The centralization, effectivization, and uniformization processes that took place, radically changed the traditional view of the legal order. These different processes were what the Spanish legal professionals shaped, resisted, and adapted to during the transitional period. These different processes that aimed for greater efficiency, simultaneously threatened the status and roles of many legal professionals, accustomed to previous everyday practices. The study ultimately has had the aim to provide understanding regarding how the legal professionals acted during the transitional period, and it furthermore encourages further research on the phenomenon. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9199386
- author
- Flórez Toscano, Froila LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SOLM02 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Constitution of Cádiz, institutional transformation, legal profession, Manifesto of the Persians, transitional period
- language
- English
- id
- 9199386
- date added to LUP
- 2025-06-23 09:28:08
- date last changed
- 2025-06-23 09:28:08
@misc{9199386,
abstract = {{This thesis investigates the legal professionals in Spain during the transitional period from the ancien régime to the liberal state, a period marked by institutional rupture, ideological conflict, and social reconfiguration. The study has the primary aim to understand how the legal professionals contributed, perceived, and resisted the extensive legal changes that took place approximately two centuries ago. The study additionally aims examining how all the developments that took place affected the legal profession itself, its identity, and the career prospects of the legal professionals.
When it comes to the methodology, the study adopts a sociological approach, analyzing diverse secondary sources through a theoretical framework developed by the Spanish historian Suárez Verdeguer. He distinguished three broad sociological tendencies during the transitional period, namely the conservatives, the innovators, and the renovators. This theoretical framework is operationalized in the study to categorize key figures, and to interpret different orientations of the Spanish legal professionals of the time. The study aims to provide a novel contribution by reinterpreting previously existing research and analyzing these sociologically. This sociological approach is additionally the research gap that aims to be filled.
The findings demonstrate that the legal profession was far from being a monolithic group, rather the group was characterized by its internal fragmentation and shifting loyalties. The centralization, effectivization, and uniformization processes that took place, radically changed the traditional view of the legal order. These different processes were what the Spanish legal professionals shaped, resisted, and adapted to during the transitional period. These different processes that aimed for greater efficiency, simultaneously threatened the status and roles of many legal professionals, accustomed to previous everyday practices. The study ultimately has had the aim to provide understanding regarding how the legal professionals acted during the transitional period, and it furthermore encourages further research on the phenomenon.}},
author = {{Flórez Toscano, Froila}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Legal Profession in Times of Change}},
year = {{2025}},
}