Intertwining pasts with present interfaces: An analysis of 'The Law' in the light of Information Technology
Keywords: Digital History; Slavery; Jurisprudence
This paper investigates how the gradual emancipation of slavery was articulated, recorded, and debated by the legal journal O Direito: Revista de Legislação, Doutrina e Jurisprudência (1873-1913). The analysis focuses on the period between the enactment of the Lei do Ventre Livre (1871) and the Abolition of Slavery (1888), with an emphasis on the editorial and discursive criteria that guided the publication of themes related to slavery. Through metadata mapping and the application of Natural Language Processing techniques, the research seeks to identify actors, legal concepts, and argumentative patterns mobilized in the courts and in the pages of the journal. In this process, we aim to understand how O Direito negotiated legal ambiguities surrounding the enslaved population, articulating categories of gender, race, and nationality, as well as to assess the extent to which its legal formulations reproduced or strained the social hierarchies of the 19th century. Finally, we discuss the potential of Digital Humanities to broaden our analyses of Brazilian legal history.