On the eve of the independence movements in the early nineteenth century, the promulgation of the 1812 Cádiz Constitution transformed economic justice for small-scale debtors and creditors by placing magistrates in Mexico City by election instead of appointment. This change directly affected the mediation of the juicios verbales (small claims hearings for cases under 100 pesos), where tens of thousands of debtors and creditors now pressed their claims before elected local magistrates. Chapter 1 analyses this system of economic justice based on nearly 1,000 small claims records, showing that economic justice was relatively effective for ordinary people from the 1810s to the 1860s. These small claims conflicts might seem a petty world of negligible amounts and narrow-minded disputes, but, analysed together, they revise a long-standing historiographical assumption among scholars that Mexico did not have strong property rights in the early nineteenth century. Instead, this chapter shows that Cádiz liberalism established a judicial institution to protect property rights, especially for creditors, that enjoyed a broad legitimacy well into Mexican independence.