Lietuvių kalba tarpukario teisėje
Legal Lithuanian Language in the Interwar Period

Summary/Abstract: It has been noticed in several treatises that the current legal traditions in the territory of Lithuania did not exist until 1918. However, even in the interwar period, the use of the legal Lithuanian language in public, state and official life was problematic. This was due to several aspects. First, in interwar Lithuania, four civil law systems were in force – the civil laws of Tsarist Russia, the German Empire, Suwalki (Napoleon‘s Code) and Palanga Parish (Local Governments Code), and two criminal law systems – Russia and Germany. During the whole period of independence, no national criminal and civil codes were adopted, and unofficial translations of the codes of Tsarist Russia into Lithuanian were used. Secondly, there were only a few dozen lawyers who wrote and spoke in Lithuanian. Also, most of them studied law in non-Lithuanian higher education institutions in Tsarist Russia and Germany. Thus, after the proclamation of the independence of the Lithuanian state, lawyers had to prepare legal acts, form Lithuanian legal terminology, examine disputes, and educate a new generation of lawyers.

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