LEGAL TRADITION OF EASTERN EUROPE. ITS RISE AND DEMISE

Abstract

The historical foundations of European legal identity are multiple in character. Usually the stress lies on the distinction between the British common law and the civil law of the continent. However, within the latter area the gradually disappearing division between Eastern and Western Europe must also be remembered. In the high middle ages the Christianization and the colonization, which signified the reception of Canon law and German town law, bound the new post-Carolingian Eastern Europe to the West. Only during the early modern times European legal unity was broken up because of the subjugation of South-eastern Europe by the Ottomans and because of the rejection of Roman law in East Central Europe. The rejection of Roman law by Polish and Hungarian noble democracy, unable to confront the absolutism of its neighbours, was followed by the political decline of the region. As a result, legal homogeneity of the continent could be accomplished only during the 19th century, when Western law and legal doctrine were transferred wholesale to the East. Nowadays the tensions between Eastern and Western Europe reveal clearly a vanishing trend.