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The Place and Significance of the Old Roman Institute of the “Lex Rhodia de iactu” in the Czech Civilian Tradition

Author(s): Petr Dostalík / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2019

The article deals with the issue of a so-called lex Rhodia de iactu in Roman and modern law. The article describes the lex Rhodia de iactu as an example of the reception of Greek law into Roman law. The article considers the reception of the principle of Rhodian Law in the Pandekt law and in the modern Czech private law. It looks the proper place and meaning of this institute within the most recent Czech Civil Code.

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Carta sine litteris — kora középkori okirathasználat és historiográfia

Author(s): Tamás Nótári / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2020

In the work De Europa by Enea Silvio Piccolomini, book no 20, regarding the history of Carinthia, stands recorded the story of prince Ingo, who, according to the legend, contributed significantly by way of his wit to the spreading of Christianity. This study presents the circumstances in which the Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, which contains an earlier record of the legend, came into being, and it examines the possible existence in historical reality of prince Ingo and his princely title. In the following, the author analyses the possible meaning and the significance to legal history of the term carta sine litteris (a charter without letters), which appears in other sources of the legend but not in the one recounted by Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Finally, the author presents the literary precursors to the legend of prince Ingo and his role in the Conversio as well as the path the legend took until being recorded by Enea Silvio.

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Historical Context of the Application of Private Law in the Geographic Space of Transylvania in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Author(s): János Székely / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

The following contribution constitutes a short primer for the studies contained in the present issue of Acta Universitatis Sapientiae – Legal Studies. We present the historical, legal, and administrative context for the development of private law in the geographic region known as Transylvania during antiquity and the Middle Ages. We make reference to the major questions of private law which shall be analysed by the various authors of this thematic issue.

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Private Law in the Province of Dacia

Author(s): Tamás Nótári / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Beginning from the late 18th century and until the mid-19th century, several wax tablets were unearthed in the locality of Roşia Montană in what is today Romania. They record, among other things, various contracts drafted during the time of the Roman Empire. They constitute a priceless database which attests to the application of Roman law in the Province of Dacia. This study is dedicated to briefly presenting the significance of the content of these tablets from the perspective of legal history. The major conclusions which can be drawn from the legal operations documented in them are presented regarding the status of persons and various types of contracts. Based on the content of the wax tablets, it can be concluded that the living application of Roman law in the province of Dacia differed in part from the norms indicated in contemporary sources, in local use some institutions being distorted and ‘adapted’ to local conditions and Hellenistic influence.

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Private Law in Transylvania as Part of the Kingdom of Hungary

Author(s): Mária Homoki-Nagy / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Transylvania was part of the mediaeval Kingdom of Hungary beginning from the founding of this kingdom and until the year 1540, when, due to historic circumstances, it became for a time a separate entity. The development of private law in this historical space was therefore in the beginning in large part convergent with that of Hungary. However, having a multi-ethnic population consisting of Hungarians, Szeklers, Saxons, and Romanians, with the first three nationalities benefitting from different, autonomous forms of administrative organization, a lot is to be said of specific Transylvanian private law. This study presents those elements and sources of private law which characterized legal relationships in Transylvania beginning with the founding of the Kingdom of Hungary and until the separation of this region from Hungary due to Ottoman conquest. We examine the major sources of law, consisting of customary law, statutory law, and acts of royal power. We then present in summarized form the main characteristics and provisions of the law applicable to persons, the family, immovable and movable property but also inheritance. Some specific private law regulations applicable to Szeklers and Saxons are also presented as well as the perspective of Romanian legal literature regarding the private law applicable to Romanians.

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Foreign Policy and International Relations of the Principality of Transylvania

Author(s): Zoltán József Fazakas / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

The subject of the paper is the international relations and recognition of the Principality of Transylvania. International law requires the existence of three mandatory elements in order to recognize a state. These are territory, population, and sovereign authority over them. If we focus on the Transylvanian state, meeting these requirements will not represent an issue. The interesting question is the fourth but not additional criteria of statehood in international law, international recognition. Without international recognition, a state cannot act as part of the international community, and there will always be a collision between claims of sovereignty by other states. In Transylvanian history, this collision existed with the Habsburg and the Ottoman Empire. The essay shows that the independent Principality of Transylvania had the recognition of other states, also having regular foreign policy and diplomatic relations. To demonstrate this statement, the essay is built on three points and breaks down as follows: the evolution of the state from the Eastern Kingdom of Hungary until the Principality of Transylvania, the foreign policy of the Transylvanian state, its directions and orientations and the international relations of the Transylvanian state, with evidence of state recognition.

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The Private Law of the Principality of Transylvania (1540–1690)

Author(s): Attila Horváth / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

In the period between AD 1540 and 1690, Transylvania enjoyed a high degree of independence in conducting its internal and also, at times, external affairs. This led to the divergence of Transylvanian private law from that of the Kingdom of Hungary, the sovereignty of which ceased in the sense of international law following the defeat at the Battle of Mohács. This divergent development is examined in the present study from the perspective of private law along with the later convergence of legal norms to those of the Habsburg Monarchy during the latter half of the 17th century. The sources of private law as well as private law norms governing the status of persons, immovable and movable property, obligations, and inheritance are examined in detail for this period. The specific laws applicable to the Szekler, Saxon, and Romanian inhabitants of Transylvania are also presented.

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Private Law in Transylvania as Part of the Habsburg Monarchy

Author(s): Mária Homoki-Nagy / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

In the course of our following study, we present the transformation of feudal institutions of private law in force in Transylvania in the early modern period and their modernization during the time when this historical region was under the control of the Habsburg Monarchy both in its absolutist (imperial) and dualist forms. We show that the sources of private law in this period were initially those enacted during the Middle Ages, which were gradually updated by the enlightened absolutist Habsburg rulers, resulting in norms fit for the bourgeois period of capitalist development at the end of the 19th century. We observe that law applicable to legal capacity and its exercise by natural persons and to families gradually developed to undo the feudal bonds and incapacities prevalent during the Middle Ages. The same was true for property law, as well as the law which governed inheritance. Also, a previously less significant field of law, commercial law, evolved spectacularly in this era, creating the framework for modern economic exchange, vibrant trade, and security of credit. The perspectives of Romanian legal history literature regarding this era are also presented.

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Integration of Transylvania into Romania from the Perspective of Private Law (1918–1945)

Author(s): Emőd Veress / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

In the following study, we present the legal history of Transylvania following the unification of this territory with Romania at the end of the First World War, and until the installation in Romania of the Soviet-type dictatorship. The heterogeneity of the Romanian legal system resulting from the country’s territorial gains is discussed as well as the various attempts at integrating Transylvanian law into the nascent legal order of Greater Romania. We also present the short interregnum in which Hungarian private law was again applied between 1940 and 1944. The Romanian legislator, facing the imperative necessity of creating a unified national legal order, had the choice of two paths: extend the already outdated laws of the Old Kingdom of Romania to the newly acquired territories or adopt new unitary laws. Both paths were taken depending on the field of law and the historical period concerned, as presented. Finally, the legislator opted for the extension of the laws of the Old Kingdom at the end of the Second World War, even in fields where better-quality norms were enacted during the reign of King Carol II but were never implemented.

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Private Law in Transylvania after 1945 and to the Present Day

Author(s): Emőd Veress / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Following the Second World War, a major transformation of Romanian private law occurred, whence also the private law applicable in the geographic region known as Transylvania was transformed under the Soviet-type dictatorial regime, which would rule the country between 1948 and 1989. Suppression – akin to abolition – of private property, wide-scale nationalization, and collectivization are presented in this study through the legal norms by which the socialist transfiguration of the national economy was meant to be achieved, along with that of personal rights and attitudes. Following the regime change of 1989, a reversion to historical patterns of regulation and then the gradual evolution of Romanian private law took place. We examine the legislative measures for the restoration of the rule of law and for achieving a transition to a market economy. We present in detail the private law implications of the (incomplete and imperfect) restitution of nationalized property and of privatization. We also show that the structure of Romanian private law was altered by the transition to the monist system of regulation, commercial law being apparently (but not in practice) merged into civil law.

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A Historical Outline of the Development of Civil Procedure in Transylvania as Part of Romania

Author(s): János Székely / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

The following study constitutes a historical outline of the evolution of Romanian civil procedure in the period between 1918 and 2013 from the perspective of the norms applicable in Transylvania as part of Romania. Romanian civil procedure in the period immediately after 1918 presented a diverse picture, with several procedural regimes applicable in the same country at the same time. This raised the necessity of unifying procedural norms, at first attempted by recodification and later accomplished by the extension of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Kingdom of Romania to Transylvania in 1943. As the Soviet-type totalitarian regime was consolidated in the late 1940s, a reform (much rather a recodification) of civil procedure occurred in the new spirit of the age, which, along with subsequent norms led to the reduction of judicial remedies and the introduction of a ‘lay element’ into the process by the presence of assessors, and it also increased the role of public prosecutors during the civil trial. Following the 1989 regime change, civil procedure in Romania at first, before a comprehensive reform, reverted to historical models, and then finally recodification was achieved.

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Soudní tlumočníci v proměnách věků - právněhistorické ohlédnutí za právní úpravou soudního tlumočení v českých zemích

Author(s): Jaromír Tauchen / Language(s): Czech Issue: 3/2021

On 1st January 2021, the long-awaited Act on Court Interpreters and Court Translators came into effect. For the first time in history, court interpreters have received a specific statute regulating the exercise of their duties. This new statute also presents an opportunity to examine the almost 200-year-long history of court interpretation and the legal status of court interpreters in the Czech lands. This issue had been mostly omitted in most legal historical works and this article, which is based on archival research and an analysis of historical case law, presents the first systematic analysis of the historical development of the regulation of court interpretation since its inception in the first half of the 19th century all the way to the present.

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Remarks on the Contractual and Delictual Issues of Slaves in the Lex Baiuvariorum

Author(s): Tamás Nótári / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

This paper intends to analyse those provisions of the Lex Baiuvariorum that regulate the position of persons in non-free status, i.e. slaves (servi, mancipia, and ancillae). In the course of our endeavour, we make efforts to find an answer to the question as to what extent the significant ecclesiastical impact, far exceeding the effect of the rest of German folk laws, becomes evident in Lex Baiuvariorum: to what extent acknowledgement of the human quality of slaves appears in the code. Not incidentally, at the end of the paper, we try to answer the question whether the meaning of the phrases mancipium, servus, and ancilla – which are usually translated by the words servant and maidservant – can be conveyed in theory by translating them by the word slave, or they require any other, more differentiated term to reveal the legal content of these phrases.

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Rukopisy a tisky s rukopisnými přípisky Koldínových Práv městských

Author(s): Stanislav Petr / Language(s): Czech Issue: 51/2/2021

In 1579, the printing workshop of Jiři Melantrich of Aventin published Práva městská Království českého [Municipal Laws of the Kingdom of Bohemia] by the Chancellor of the Old Town of Prague, Pavel Kristian of Koldin. The code was then used in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia until 1811. The study builds on and complements the inventory of František Hoffmann, published in 1979. It newly describes Koldin’s Práva městská in 58 manuscript copies and six printed books with handwritten notes.

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Rekwizycje wojskowe w prawie francuskim

Author(s): Marcin Konarski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2022

The subject of this analysis is related to the French legal regulations in the field of military requisitions. They are treated as an element of a coherent system of State defence, which is based in the normative sphere on the fundamental legal act – the Code of Defence (Le code de la defense) of 2004. In the course of his discussion, the author presents the scope of legal solutions relating to military requisitions, the procedure of their performance, the system of compensation and indemnities, as well as criminal sanctions established to prevent violation of the requisition regulations.

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Kovács Kálmán Árpád (szerk.): Nemzetiségek és törvényhozás Magyarországon

Author(s): Krisztián Bodnár / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 3/2022

The nationality question is still a living burden (and the attitude of dualist Hungary towards nationalities, for example, generates particularly sharp debates), but the studies in this volume are balanced, reflecting the problems and the contemporary actors.

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The Emergence and Limits of State Supremacy. A Comparative Analysis of the Powers of the Prince of Transylvania and the Habsburgs Holding the Hungarian Royal Title

Author(s): Pál Szentpáli-Gavallér / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

This study outlines the historical and theoretical background of the evolution of sovereignty and monarchy, that is, its Roman-Germanic roots, as well as the constitutional history of Hungarian and Transylvanian sovereignty, and discusses the limitations of the ruler’s power, in particular the fundamental role of Transylvanian electoral conditions, on the basis of which the Transylvanian princely state was given a manner of rule of law. The paper contains a comparative analysis of royal and princely powers.

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Lajos Takács: A Hungarian Lawyer’s Life in 20th-Century Transylvania

Author(s): Emőd Veress / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

Lajos Takács was born in Transylvania, a multi-ethnic region, at the time (before 1918/20) part of Kingdom of Hungary and later part of Romania. He finished his studies in law in what was by that time Romania, given that the university centre of Transylvania, Cluj, had become part of Romania. He was a young lawyer of good ability, gifted with political and social sensitivity. After 1945, he found himself in the service of the emerging dictatorship because he certainly believed that the time had come for a solution to the question of nationalities, for reconciliation, equality, cooperation, and friendship between Romanians and Hungarians. In this capacity, however, he contributed to the dismantling of Hungarian institutions and organizations, most notably – as rector – to the forced merger of Bolyai University into Victor Babeş University. Instead of reconciliation, the system was characterized by the oppression of minorities. Takács, in his old age, realizing his mistakes, became an opponent of the regime and of Ceauşescu. In the 1980s, during the darkest period of the dictatorship, he died without the hope that some of his former dreams would come true.

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The ‘Fertile Source’ of Hungarian Constitutional Law: Thoughts on the 800-Year-Old Golden Bull

Author(s): Zoltán József Fazakas / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

In the year 2022, Hungary had the opportunity for a double celebration on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the entry into force of the Fundamental Law and the eight hundredth anniversary of the Golden Bull issued by Andrew II. Eight hundred years ago, the Golden Bull, as one of the roots of the Hungarian historical constitution, formulated answers to certain questions of constitutional importance, which later proved to be suitable for the interpretation of power in Hungary as bound by law. In the context of constitutional law, the Golden Bull was one of the most important fundamental bills of noble liberties. The revolution of 1848, which laid the foundations of the modern constitutional state, was based precisely on the extension of these noble liberties, and thus some of their theses were also applied later. Because of the social change of the 19th century, which was partly inspired by it, the Golden Bull was a cardinal law, the basis of the modern Hungarian rule of law, which was valid as part of the historical constitution. Today, through the provisions of the Fundamental Law that name the historical constitution, it is not only ahistorical monument but the root of living law, and thus it retains its critical and interpretative significance. For these reasons, the present study outlines the relationship between the current Fundamental Law and the historical Hungarian constitution, cited in several provisions of the Fundamental Law, and then analyses the place of the Golden Bull as a cardinal law, the constitutional context of its origins in the Hungarian unwritten constitution, and its direct relationship with the constitutional revolution of 1848. The next part of the study explores the roots of those constitutional institutions that are still in force today, which can be derived directly or indirectly from the Golden Bull, thus paying homage to the eight-hundred-year-old source of constitutional law of the more than one-thousand-year-old Hungarian statehood, as well as to the current Fundamental Law and its promulgator, King Andrew II, who is often misunderstood by the public.

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The Last Four Decades of Research on Wills in Hungary

Author(s): József Horváth / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

In recent decades, there has been growing interest in the use of wills as historical sources. This period has seen a tenfold increase in the number of source publication volumes and editions published by Hungarian researchers, and an even greater increase in the number of wills published in their entirety. In the period under review, around 70 researchers have been actively working with this source type: besides the archivists spearheading their publication, dozens of legal historians, historians, and ethnographers have been involved in the work. Following an overview of the most important historical research antecedents and a brief appreciation of the work of Ernő Tárkány Szücs in this field, the present study examines the respective work carried out in Hungary during the last four decades, grouped according to the researched periods. With the publication of the Prothocollum Testamentorum of Bratislava, the number of published wills from the late Middle Ages significantly increased, while important findings have also emerged in terms of research on the wills of the nobility. From the early Middle Ages, a significant selection has been made from among the extant testaments originating from various royal free cities (e.g., Nagyszombat [Trnava, Slovakia], Sopron, and Debrecen) and market towns (e.g., Gyöngyös, Győr, and Kecskemét), while a significant number of wills belonging to the Transylvanian nobility have also been published. While large numbers of extant testaments originating from market towns (Nyíregyháza, Szentes, Vác, Zalaegerszeg, etc.) in the 18th and 19th centuries have been published, important publications have also appeared containing the wills of the nobility, clergy, and village serfs. The vast majority of such volumes have included a longer or shorter introductory study, although we might also mention the dozens of important analytical essays published in volumes of collected studies, which illustrate the value of testaments as sources in the fields of social, economic, cultural, ecclesiastical, and legal history.

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