"Traces, through legal documents and court cases, the roots of Texas community-property law to Castilian law during the Spanish Reconquest. Examines why Spanish community-law developed so differently from elsewhere in Europe, why it survived in Texas, and what it offered that English common law did not"--Provided by publisher.

Jean A. Stuntz teaches Texas and Spanish borderlands history at West Texas A&M University, in Canyon. Trained in the law, she now specializes in women's history of the Southwest.