FORMALISM AND SYMBOLICS IN ALBANIAN CUSTOMARУ LAW Cover Image

ФОРМАЛИЗАМ И СИМБОЛИКА У АРБАНАШКОЈ БЕСИ
FORMALISM AND SYMBOLICS IN ALBANIAN CUSTOMARУ LAW

Author(s): Milutin Đuričić
Subject(s): Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence
Published by: Правни факултет Универзитета у Београду
Keywords: Formalism; Symbolics; Gestures; Protection

Summary/Abstract: The formalism, symbolics and gestures are constitutive elements at the concluding of legal transactions in Albanian customary rules in Kosovo and Metohija. These are consequences of the primordial illiteracy,, the tendency to avoid vendetta and pledging one’s life for the obligations undertaken. Strictness of form is but a consequence of the brutality of legal life. In the legal game with lives and deaths the laconic form has to be remembered by all the participants to a legal transaction. The symbolics of personal protection is expressed in giving the "bread”, "the hand", the branch with leaves, in moving in the company of the debtor of blood (a party owing blood in vendetta). Property is protected by oaths, graves and sticks. Specific gestures and the symbolics are necessary also in order to enter an Albanian house. At present, legal transaction in Kosovo and Metohija are concluded both according to customs and to the existing written law.

  • Issue Year: 38/1990
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 436-442
  • Page Count: 7
  • Language: Serbian