Mehr als hundert Jahre Rechtsgeschichte in Brünn: Entwicklung, Tradition und wissenschaftliches Profil an der Juristischen Fakultät der Masaryk-Universität
More than One Hundred Years of Legal History in Brno: Development, Tradition, and Scholarly Profile at the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University

Summary/Abstract: This article traces more than a century of legal-historical scholarship and teaching at the Faculty of Law in Brno, from the founding of Masaryk University in 1919 to the present (1919–2025). It examines the institutional role of legal history within the curriculum, the methodological self-understanding of the discipline, and the contribution of key individuals who shaped its academic profile. Special attention is paid to the major political and institutional ruptures that repeatedly disrupted the faculty’s existence and reorganized its scholarly priorities – most notably the closure of Czech universities in 1939, the abolition of the Brno Faculty of Law in 1950, its re-establishment in 1969, and the post-1989 transformation of higher education. The study argues that, despite profound discontinuities at the institutional level, a distinctive Brno tradition of legal history persisted through personal, intellectual, and scholarly continuities carried by successive generations of teachers and researchers, often outside the university framework. In the post-1989 era, the Brno department maintained a strong position of legal-historical disciplines in the curriculum while simultaneously expanding its thematic scope toward modern and contemporary legal history, including developments after 1989, supported by new teaching materials and a broadened international network.

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