The Emergence and Initial Progress of the Statutory Theory

Abstract

As early as from the Roman period, the fertile Lombard Plain and the cities of Northern Italy — Pisa, Milan, Bologna, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Parma, Padua, Modena, Ferrara, Siena and others — ranked among the richest commercial centres trading with areas north of the.Alps and with overseas lands. The wealth of these urban centres, originally incorporated in feudal systems, encouraged the emerging bourgeoisie to supplement its growing economic power with a special political status, free of the feudal fetters, in order to obtain cheap labour from the adjacent rural areas. The beginning of the 11th century saw the beginning of the process of liberation of these cities from their feudal episcopal or secular overlords; after administrative and judicial authority had been transferred to the city administrations, this process culminated in the Peace Treaty of Constance in 1183, concluded between the union of Lombard cities and Emperor Frederic I, Barbarossa. This peace meant for the Italian cities their de facto separation from the central authority of the Holy Roman Empire which maintained only formal sovereignty over them. The rights granted to these cities under the Peace of Constance included the right of their own legislative competence.1 Most of the cities of Northern Italy became independent city-states which issued their own laws (statuta) necessitated by their rapidly growing commercial contacts; this, in turn, resulted in a steadily increasing number of legal relations containing a foreign element. The equal position of the individual urban entities and the diversity of their laws gave rise to problems which today are included in private international law. The universal law observed by the North Italian cities continued to be Roman law, but the statuta issued by the individual cities could derogate Roman law under the principle lex posterior derogat legi priori. And between the city statutes and the Roman law there still existed municipal consuetudinary law which included both Roman and Germanic elements.2