In order to overcome regional stability challenges stemming from limited power resources, Latin American states have developed a legalistic foreign policy tradition. The authors highlight an original combination of incentives and constraints shaped by the external environment and analyze the historical, political, and civilizational origins of the foreign policy tradition embodied in a series of influential politico-legal doctrines of regional stability, such as the Drago, Calvo, Tobar, Estrada, Larreta, Saavedra Lamas, and Brum doctrines. They also trace the legalistic approach to historical and political factors, including limited resources for developing a symmetrical response capacity to external challenges, as well as the historical context in which independence was gained prior to the universalization of international legal norms related to decolonization and self-determination of peoples. The authors conceptualize the Iberian intellectual heritage as a civilizational source, emphasizing the role which was played by the School of Salamanca and Enlightenment ideas in shaping the tradition. While the evolution of Latin American foreign policy behavior demonstrates the dominance of the legalistic or Bolivarian tradition, it also reveals an antagonistic Santanderian approach: the former rests on the rule of law whereas the latter is grounded in the principle that might makes right. The authors also conceptualize the situational choice between doctrinal and counter-doctrinal approaches to addressing regional stability challenges as a core dichotomy within Latin American foreign policy. At the core of the methodology applied in the article is a comparative-historical method employed for identifying specific features of the Latin American tradition, alongside methods of historical reconstruction (process tracing) and the systemic approach developed by M.A. Khrustalev.