Open Access

Tomasz Giaro

• Die juristische Europakarte bestand bis vor kurzem aus dem common law, dem romanistischen civil law und dem sozialistischen Recht. Angesichts dessen Niedergangs und des Zusammenwachsens Westeuropas vereint man die beiden ersteren unter dem altsowjetologischen Schild der western legal tradition, wodurch das Ostrecht aus der europäischen Rechtsgeschichte ausgegrenzt wird. Coings Weitsicht, Osteuropa einschließlich Russlands mindestens teilweise in die Disziplin einzubeziehen, findet praktisch keine Nachahmer. Immer noch versteht man, in Savignys Fußstapfen tretend, unter der "europäischen" mehr oder minder stillschweigend die westeuropäische Rechtsgeschichte. Die "Reformstaaten Mittel- und Osteuropas" tauchen in manchem Traktat der Rechtsvergleichung wie deus ex machina auf. Während man die Zäsur zwischen civil law und common law vernachlässigt, wird die europäische Natur Osteuropas, besonders Russlands und der Balkanländer, angezweifelt. ...
• Western European legal historiography deplores the 19th century as the age of destruction of the Romanrooted ius commune by national codes. In reality the French code civil, the Austrian ABGB and the German Pandectist jurisprudence effected rather a relative unification of private law. In the same way, French constitutionalism as well as the administrative and court system spread throughout the West. This wave of law reform also rolled over Eastern Europe, until then a patchwork of customary law. In South-Eastern Europe, previously under Byzantine influence, the Serbian Civil Code of 1844 followed the Austrian ABGB, while the Rumanian Code of 1864 followed the French code civil. All over the region the liberal Belgian constitution of 1831 was very influential. Bohemia and Poland, both of them forming the eastern periphery of the Central-European empires, simply had their law imposed upon them. Hungary and Russia, on the other hand, modernized their law mainly by means of German Pandectist jurisprudence. In this way the patchwork of eastern customary law was harmonized. The further circulation of western legal models in the interwar period completed the relative unification of continental European law. The communist rule left these common legal bases of West and East to a large extent intact.