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 of legalization. The Pen, the Sword, and the Law
explores how the only country in the world to decriminalize duelling
managed the tension between these informal but widely accepted
"gentlemanly laws" and its own criminal code. The duel, which remained
legal until 1992, was meant to ensure civility in politics and decorum
in the press, but it often failed to achieve either. Drawing on rich and
detailed newspaper reports of duels and challenges, parliamentary
debates, legal records, private papers, and interviews, David Parker
examines the role of pistols and sabres in shaping the everyday workings
of a raucous public sphere. Demonstrating that the duel was no simple
throwback to archaic conceptions of masculine honour and chivalry, The
Pen, the Sword, and the Law illustrates how duelling went hand in hand
with democracy and freedom of the press in one of South America's most
progressive nations.