The emergence of national legal systems in post-Ottoman Southeast Europe

Project leader: Prof. em. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Michael Stolleis

The project was dedicated to the formation of national legal systems in the Southeast European states in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is a complex process whose structural conditions reach far back into the preceding Ottoman period.

What is the role of Western law and the patterns of Occidental modernity in post-Ottoman Southeast Europe? What are the conditions of legal transfers and how is the new law implemented and legitimized? What about the constraints of national restarts and how present is the Ottoman legacy in the post-Ottoman normative order? With the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the historical region of Southeast Europe is entering a phase of forced change. The post-Ottoman constellation is a mixture of old and new law, of traditional, transformed and transferred normativity and the evidence of sub-regional specifics. At the same time, it is embedded in processes of the formation of nation states and the quest for their legitimization. The topics of constitution-making and the development of modernized criminal and civil law were examined. Particular attention was paid to researching judicial and non-judicial enforcement of norms.

The project views the legal history of the region both in a pan-European context and within the framework of Ottoman history. In the course of a forced modernization of the traditionally organized societies of Southeast Europe, law was seen as both an end and a goal. The new nation states attempted to replace their own legal traditions, which were dominated by customary law, informal dispute resolution or, in some cases, feudal jurisdiction, with modern, Western European law – combined with the idea that this would also help them achieve the level of development of Western European states. Modernization and the transfer of law were therefore the focus of the project and were examined as examples in the areas of constitutional law, civil law and criminal law. The project set up research groups in Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Turkey, each consisting of six to eight academics. In cooperation with the University of Vienna (Prof. Dr. Thomas Simon), a further group was set up with Bosnian and Serbian academics.

The results were discussed in a series of cross-group workshops and have been published in two project volumes in the MPIeR’s “Studies in European Legal History” series:
Michael Stolleis (ed., with the collaboration of Gerd Bender and Jani Kirov) (2016): Conflict and Coexistence. Die Rechtsordnungen Südosteuropas im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Vol. 1: Rumänien, Bulgarien, Griechenland, Frankfurt/M.: Klostermann, 2 half-volumes, XIV, X, 1031 p.
Simon, Thomas (ed.) (2017): Konflikt und Koexistenz Die Rechtsordnungen Südosteuropas im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, vol. 2: Serbien, Bosnien-Herzegowina, Albanien, Frankfurt/M.: Klostermann. IX, 629 PP.

The most important publications also include:
Gerd Bender/Jani Kirov (2010): “Die Entstehung nationaler Rechtssysteme im postosmanischen Südosteuropa: Dekonstruktion, Formation und Transfer von Normativität”, in: Jahrbuch der MPG 2010, (online at: http://www.mpg.de/387915/forschungsSchwerpunkt).
Jani Kirov (2009): “Foreign Law Between Grand Hazard and Great Irritation: The Bulgarian Experience after 1878”, in: Theoretical Inquiries in Law 2, 699-722.
Jani Kirov (2011): “Prolegomena zu einer Rechtsgeschichte Südosteuropas”, in: Rechtsgeschichte 18, 140-161. Michael Stolleis (2012): “Transfer normativer Ordnungen, Baumaterial für junge Nationalstaaten”, in: Rechtsgeschichte 20, 72-84.

The project included the international conference “Zur Entstehung nationaler Rechtssysteme im postosmanischen Südosteuropa. Deconstruction, Formation and Transfer of Normativity”, 29-30.9.2010.