The Pen, the Sword, and the Law: Dueling and Democracy in Uruguay

The duel, and the codes of honour that governed duelling, functioned for decades in many European and Latin American countries as a shadow legal system, regulating in practice what legislators felt free to say and what journalists felt free to write. Yet the duel was also an act of potentially deadly violence and a challenge to the authority of statutory law.

When duelling became widespread in early twentieth-century Uruguay, legislators facing this dilemma chose the unique and radical path ...