Augusto Teixeira de Freitas

Augusto Teixeira de Freitas lived from 1816 to 1883 and was a prominent Brazilian jurist whose prolific writings inspired every South American private law codification that followed. After studying at Olinda and Sao Paulo, he practiced law as an advocate and jurisconsult, and as president of the Order of Advocates and legal counsel to the State Council of the Empire of Brazil he composed the first systematic compilation of Brazilian civil law, the Consolidação das Leis Civis of 1857, which served in place of a civil code until 1916. His major work, the Esboco de Codigo Civil, a draft civil code begun between 1860 and 1864, remained unfinished after 4,908 articles had been written, at which point the government released him from his commission, exhausted; the Esboco was nonetheless a pioneering work that formed the basis for later codifications in Brazil, in Argentina through the work of Dalmacio Velez Sarsfield, and across the rest of South America.