Freitas (Dr Justino António de)

This illustrious Madeiran was born on 13 September 1804. He was studying in the faculty of law of our University when the civil war broke out, forcing him to interrupt his studies, so that he was able to complete his academic career only late. As he professed liberal ideas, he suffered persecution at the hands of the absolutist government: he spent many months imprisoned in the gaols of Coimbra and also some time as a fugitive.

He had a most distinguished course of studies, completing his degree in 1836 and taking his doctorate in April 1837. He joined the teaching staff of the University in 1840 as a substitute professor (lente substituto), and was promoted to full professor (lente catedrático) by decree of 4 November 1852. As a professor at our foremost educational establishment, he was noted above all for the reform he introduced in the teaching of a branch of the legal sciences hitherto little cultivated in Portugal: administrative law. He organised the study of this discipline on sound foundations and along truly scientific lines, whereas until then it had been taught at the University in a very antiquated manner that left much to be desired. To serve as the textbook for this chair, he published a valuable work entitled Instituições de Direito Administrativo Portuguez, of which two editions appeared within a few years. Besides his important contributions to specialist journals, he wrote the Manual dos Juizes eleitos, which ran to seven editions, and the Manual do Rendeiro, which was reissued twice.

Dr Justino de Freitas was one of the ablest advocates of his time. In Coimbra, where so many distinguished jurists devoted themselves to a career at the bar, he was then considered the most illustrious lawyer in the city. He carried on these honourable traditions in Lisbon when he practised law in the capital, having settled there to serve as a member of the Higher Council of Public Instruction and to take a more active part in political struggles and, in particular, in parliamentary work.

In the national assembly, where he sat as a deputy for many years, he brilliantly upheld the reputation as a distinguished jurist and orator that had preceded him. It was perhaps, however, as a member of various parliamentary committees and as rapporteur of countless bills that he revealed his qualities as a distinguished parliamentarian. He would several times have held a ministerial portfolio had he not always sought to avoid joining any cabinet. The work of his law office, which frequently handled cases of great importance, some of them notoriously celebrated, his regular attendance at the sessions of the Higher Council of Education (Instrução) and his work on parliamentary committees systematically kept him away from the grave concerns and heavy responsibilities that a minister’s portfolio would have brought him. ‘It was for this reason,’ we read somewhere, ‘that in Justino de Freitas, besides remarkable talent, served by an uncommon learning in forensic matters, there was something like the artistic inspiration of advocacy; and in the last years of his life, more than the interests of that honourable and glorious profession, it was a fanatical love of the practice of jurisprudence that kept him at the advocate’s bench.’

Dr Justino António de Freitas was actively involved in politics from his student days. He followed liberal ideas during our civil wars, for which he was imprisoned and persecuted. He later took a very active part in the revolutionary movement of 1846 and became a member of the provisional government formed at that time. Despite this, he asked politics for neither sinecures nor honours: he never accepted or sought public posts, and he always disdained the titles and honorary offices with which others at times wished to distinguish him.

He died in Lisbon on 28 November 1865. He was the father of the well-known statesman Augusto César Barjona de Freitas.