Legal Process and the Meanings of Justice (Dreptate) in Eighteenth Century Romania

Abstract

This article examines the conception of “justice” that social actors took to court in eighteenth-century Romania, and at what remained of that idea over the course of the long judicial process. It utilises court cases to consider how “justice” was defined by plaintiffs, how it was revealed in their behaviour, how it was understood and served by the authorities. Based on unpublished sources from a range of judicial archives in Bucharest and Iaşi, it considers the tensions between the “justice” of subjects and the “law” of the authorities: to whom did plaintiffs address themselves; who embodied “justice”; what was the source of that “justice”? It will argue that it is impossible to understand contemporary legal practice in Romania without acknowledging its roots in the eighteenth-century.