Edition of the Provisional Judicial Rules of the Judex-Curial Conference from 1861 and the Methodology of Editions of Historical Legal Sources

Abstract

The paper explains the methodology applied in the edition of historical legal sources of major importance for the 19th and 20th centuries Slovakia – the edition of the Provisional Judicial Rules (“PJR”) of the Judex-Curial Conference of 1861. At the Conference, legal scholars and politicians adopted a decision to abandon the previous twelve years of neoabsolutism and centralism introduced by the Austrian law, and opted for a renewal of the traditional Hungarian legal system with some changes introduced by the laws of March 1848 (the March Constitution of 1848). At the same time they retained some rules of Austrian origin and created some rules that were entirely new, particularly in the field of civil procedural law and inheritance law. While evaluating the legal nature of the PJR, the literature used to claim that they never became law because Parliament of 1861 was not created legally (representatives were not elected under the electoral law enacted as part of the March Constitution of 1848) and because the monarch, Francis Joseph I, had not yet been crowned (his coronation took place in 1867). Therefore the legislative process could not be successfully completed. The only solution that was reported to was the recognition of the exceptional situation which dominated in Hungary between 1861–1867 – It was the period between neoabsolutism and another provisorium, a period of “limited constitutionalism”. Under such conditions it was not possible to meet the formalities of official legislation process. Thus PJR could become binding only de facto – through the power of persuasion. However, after a corpus of case law began to consolidate during several years, it could be argued that the PJR was transformed from the actual source of judicial decision-making into customary law.