Юридическите обичаи и обичайното право в българските земи до края на XIX век
Juridical Customs and Customary (Common) Law in the Bulgarian Lands up to the End of the 19th Century

Summary/Abstract: Juridical customs were legalized as a source of law (jurisprudence) as early as in the period of the First Bulgarian Kingdom. In the period of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom the use of Bulgarian customary (common) law continued, together with the official written law. After Bulgaria had fallen under Ottoman bondage part of the customary law norms and institutions continued to be observed. However, the use of Bulgarian customary law was restricted to the sphere of the family, inheritance, contractual law and partly the law of real estate, penal and court law. Custom was also the source of law after Bulgaria's Liberation from Ottoman bondage and influenced legislation, the distribution of justice and jurisprudence. The norms of customary law were chiefly applied in cases concerning the family, inheritance, contracts and procedures. Custom came to the fore in settling contractual relations, in procedural legislation, legalizing the inequality of heirs of male and female sex in inheriting rural real estate, etc. Although some of the institutions of customary law stayed in existence even until the socialist revolution in Bulgaria, the fate of custom as a source of law was already decided after the Liberation. It found legal confirmation in building up bourgeois Bulgarian law.

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