Introduction to a Compilation of Spanish and Mexican Law in Relation to Mines and Titles to Real Estate, in Force in California, Texas and New Mexico

Abstract

This short biography of antebellum international attorney John A. Rockwell is based on manuscript documents in the Huntington Library and introduces the reissue of his 1851 treatise on Hispanic land and mining law. During the 1840s and 1850s Rockwell specialized in legal claims involving Mexico before special arbitration commissions and before the U.S. Court of Claims, which he helped establish in 1855. His cases included lawsuits by U.S. steamboat owners operating in Tabasco, claims for death benefits earned by Americans serving in the Mexican military, and the hotly contested dispute over the New Almaden, California, mercury mine. Drawing upon his wide practice Rockwell compiled a comprehensive collection of translated Spanish-language sources relevant to mineral and real estate litigation in the territories conquered from Mexico, which became the principal authority on Hispanic natural resource law for lawyers practicing in the Southwest. While highly successful as a practitioner, Rockwell was frustrated as a Whig politician attempting to avoid the sectional issues preceding the Civil War. Nevertheless his career provided a model for cross-cultural international lawyers as America’s global trade expanded in the mid- to late nineteenth century.