In this paper, the author documents the endurance of elements of Spanish law in the legal system of the United States. Las Siete Partidas have been quoted in belletristic, historical, scientific, legal and philosophical works throughout the centuries. Yet, it is amazing to consider that words and legal concepts taken directly from Partida ‘laws’ appear, in their source language and in translation, within legal opinions written in many states of the United States in the twentieth century. What did these verbal signs represent in the original text, and what was the nature and meaning of their journey through time into the jurisprudence of North, Central and South America? What philological, social and political artifacts of medieval Spanish institutions were transferred to modern American cultures through the media of language and legal theory?