ABSTRACT
Cuba was the first important territory colonized by Spain in the western hemisphere, and it was the last to gain its independence. The Cuban judicial system was modelled after the Spanish system, with one important innovation—the creation of a court of constitutional review—which reflected US influence. Legal theory has been central both to shaping the content of specific laws as well as to the evolution of a coherent jurisprudential basis for the Cuban socialist state. Pursuant to the concept of socialist legality, law and government perform a positive, dynamic function in the creation of socialism. The complex task of managing a socialist economy and mediating the social contradictions that have emerged in the process of building socialism has produced a permanent state of reassessment and reform in Cuba. In the process Cuba must solve more than one paradox. Consistent with Marxist theory and their own civil law tradition, Cuban jurists accept the belief that law has a scientific basis.
