"Gentlemanly Jurisprudence and the Rule of Law: Why Dueling was Legal in Uruguay from 1920 to 1992" a talk with David S. Parker 
 

Time: Friday March 10, 3pm-5 pm 

Location: Seminar Room LB-362 within the Concordia Webster Library, 1400 de Maisonneuve W. 

Zoom link: https://concordia-ca.zoom.us/j/86198245671 

About the event: 
 

Uruguay was the only country in the world to legalize dueling, from 1920 to 1992.  But why?  Drawing on David S. Parker's recent book The Pen, the Sword, and the Law:  Dueling and Democracy in Uruguay (MQUP, 2022), this talk looks at how the codes that governed dueling functioned as a parallel legal system that policed the guardrails of press freedom, regulating what politicians could say and journalists could write.  But if lawmakers felt they needed the duel to enforce civility and curb verbal violence in the press, it nevertheless troubled them that dueling Congressmen, Presidents and Police Chiefs violated the law with impunity.  Combining some jaw-dropping storytelling with an analysis of how the duel worked in both theory and practice (not the same thing), this talk probes the tension between the rule of law and the “laws” of honor.