Liberalism and human rights in the Cádiz Constitution of 1812 and in the Portuguese Constitution of 1822. Comparative history

This article appeals to the convenience of reinforcing the use of comparatism as a methodological tool to better understand the history of early Portuguese and Spanish liberalism and their proven interactions. Based on comparative history and “discourse analysis (DA)”, considering secondary sources and primary legislative and media sources, we enter into the legal and historiographical debate on the impact of the Spanish Constitution of 1812 on the Portuguese Constitution of 1822, of which we are celebrating the bicentenary this year, and reinterprets and qualifies the role played by the introduction of a Declaration of Human Rights – absent in the Cadiz Constitution – in the Portuguese Constitution, minimizing the differential burden that historiography has tended to attribute of this piece of normative discourse on human rights from both the analytical and sociopolitical points of view.