The purpose of this paper is to provide for a theoretical reflection concerning the continued use of certain legal institutions, concepts, rules or principles outside the socio-economic or political context in which such legal morphemes (known as “legal survivals”), were created. In order to refer to the phenomenon of endurance of legal survivals following a transformation, transition or revolution, the paper will use the term “nomostasis,” coined from the Greek words denoting “law” (nomos) and “resistance to change” or “stability” (stasis). The goal of the present paper is to formulate a number of hypotheses concerning the conditions of possibility of nomostasis with view to creating a theoretical scaffolding to be later filled with empirical, sociohistorical case-studies. For this purpose, the paper isolates and groups two types of factors enabling or favouring nomostasis: (1) endogenous ones, i.e., those pertaining to the juristic community as such and (2) exogenous ones, i.e., those pertaining to the environment within which that community functions, most notably the political and ideological climate. By contrast, the present paper does not address the question of intrinsic features of legal morphemes that may or may not favour nomostasis. The main theoretical hypothesis advanced in the paper is that for nomostasis to occur, one can typically expect there to be a need for a favourable combination of endogenous and exogenous factors. The paper is intended to provide elements of a theoretical framework for further empirical sociohistorical research on nomostasis within the broader framework of the historical sociology of law as a specific sub-discipline at the interstices of sociology of law and legal history.

2nd Czecho-Slovak Symposium on Challenges of AI for Administrative Law was organised by the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law at the Law Faculty, University of Košice, at the beginning of October 2025 in the picturesque Tokaj Region. This conference report aims to present the symposium to the readers of the Bratislava Law Review.

The article examines scientific, theoretical and practical approaches to the issue of the right to a firm in the law of the Russian Empire in the period from the 1880s to 1917. In pre-revolutionary law, doctrine and practice, the right to a firm was understood as the right of a merchant or industrialist to carry out entrepreneurial activity under a certain designation, called in commercial life “firm”. Both legal science and then judicial practice understood a firm as a trade (commercial) name. Unlike many Western countries, as well as the Far East (e.g., Japan), this concept was never codified, although such attempts were repeatedly made. The authors conclude that the doctrine that emerged during this period of time significantly outpaced the adoption of relevant legislation, and sometimes even the judicial practice. The treatises of such researchers as A. Bashilov (1887), G. Shershenevich (1888), A. Hol’msten (1895), Vs. Udintsev (1907), A. Fyodorov (1911), A. Kaminka (1912), and others were used as an analysis of the doctrine; the authors also conducted an analysis of a number of judgments of the 4th (later the Judicial department) of the Governing Senate on the issue of the right to a firm, as well as the judgments of some courts of the European states.

This paper examines the intersection of originality and authorship in copyright law, focusing on the treatment of AI-generated and AI-assisted works in China and the European Union. It identifies the conceptual oscillation between the two terms and addresses it by introducing a unified analytical scaffold, the Two-Tier Matrix, distinguishing between an objective layer of originality (independent creation and minimal creativity) and a subjective layer of authorship (free and creative choices by a natural person). The analysis traces how statutory provisions, doctrinal debates, and judicial decisions in both jurisdictions can be mapped onto this two-tier structure. In China, courts and scholars emphasise the objective tier, lowering the threshold for minimal creativity while requiring demonstrable human involvement. By contrast, the EU situates protection firmly within the subjective tier, demanding discernible human creative choices as established in Court of Justice of the European Union case law such as Infopaq and Painer. The comparative framework reveals not only the different doctrinal trajectories of the two systems but also highlights their convergences and the challenges they face in regulating AI creativity. By adopting the Two-Tier Matrix, this study provides a coherent tool for evaluating emerging copyright questions and contributes to the broader academic discussion on the future governance of AI-authored works.

This article investigates how the principle of contractual justice - an unwritten yet fundamental source of private law - continues to operate in an era shaped by artificial intelligence (AI). Although pacta sunt servanda remains the cornerstone of contractual certainty, the doctrine of rebus sic stantibus functions as a corrective when radically changed circumstances would make strict performance inequitable. Recognised across all developed legal orders and recently codified in many, the authors analyse the doctrine in more than twenty European jurisdictions, with attention to convergences and doctrinal divergences. The study then turns to smart-contract technology and AI-driven automation, asking whether code-based execution can accommodate contractual justice or instead amplifies contractual rigidity. The authors conclude that automated decision-making can handle only quantifiable adjustments, whereas genuine fairness still requires case-sensitive judicial discretion grounded in unwritten principles. Even - and especially - in the age of AI, therefore, courts - and the normative resources of good faith, fairness and equity - remain indispensable safeguards of contractual balance.

This article explores the legal significance of kinship care as an unwritten source of child protection law across diverse legal and cultural contexts. While modern child welfare systems prioritise written statutes and formal procedures, millions of children globally are raised in informal caregiving arrangements by extended family members - grandparents, aunts, uncles, or siblings - based not on legal documentation but on social norms, customs, and moral obligations. Drawing on Eugen Ehrlich’s concept of living law and John Eekelaar’s analysis of normative family systems, the article conceptualises kinship care as a form of law-in-action, embedded in community practices, yet largely invisible to formal legal order. The study adopts a comparative methodology, focusing on Central and Eastern Europe (with attention to Slovakia and Hungary) and the Global South (specifically Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America), where kinship care constitutes a primary mode of alternative care. It examines the legal invisibility of children in informal kinship care, assessing both the benefits - such as cultural legitimacy and continuity - and the challenges, including lack of oversight, gendered caregiving burdens, and weak legal protection. The article further critiques the limitations of international children’s rights law, particularly the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and General Comment No. 14, which recognise the role of extended family but provide little regulatory guidance. The concluding section proposes a model of legal pluralism and child-centred harmonisation that seeks to bridge unwritten caregiving norms with state law. The study calls for greater engagement with unwritten sources of law in order to develop a more just, inclusive, and context-responsive child protection framework.

This essay proposes three axioms to clarify the status of unwritten law and unwritten sources of law. The first axiom asserts that written and unwritten norms share the same ontological status as abstract institutional entities, differing only in their modes of inscription and accessibility. The second axiom argues that their epistemological distinction is weak: both statutes and customs rely on overlapping forms of documentary and testimonial justification, despite following divergent procedural paths. The third axiom contends that laws and sources of law are not categorically distinct, but functionally interwoven, often reinforcing each other within the normative fabric of legal systems. Rather than offering final answers, these axioms serve as conceptual instruments – provisional yet clarifying tools for navigating the complex relations between codified rules and evolving practices. By foregrounding this triadic framework, the essay invites a renewed philosophical inquiry into the fluid architecture of normative authority.

Unwritten rules are an essential and inherent aspect of any constitutional system, including that of the Czech Republic. However, there are significant differences in opinions regarding their character and importance for the functioning of Czech constitutional law. As a result, the current academic discussion results in persistent uncertainty about what unwritten rules actually are, which term should be used to describe them, and what status they should be assigned within the constitutional legal framework. This article employs the method of functional analysis to identify and define three distinct constitutional legal constructs. Although these constructs share certain common features (unwritten nature, usus longaevus, opinio necessitatis, and relevance to the functioning of the constitutional system), they differ in other respects, with each fulfilling a unique role in the Czech constitutional framework. The first construct, referred to as constitutional custom, has a norm-creating function, enabling it to independently establish new constitutional norms. The second construct, established constitutional practice, is relevant for interpreting the constitution and serves an interpretive and argumentative function by solidifying one of the originally pluralistic interpretations of the written provisions of the constitution. Lastly, the third identified construct, referred to as constitutional convention, has a preventive and moderating function. It is not legally binding or judicially enforceable. However, it can be effectively enforced through extra-legal, typically political, mechanisms. We believe that distinguishing these three separate constructs with their differing functions will help clarify the existing ambiguities surrounding unwritten rules (not only) in Czech constitutional law and prevent potential issues arising from the substitution or hybridisation of these constructs.

Nationality, lex patriae, continues to play a significant role as a connecting factor in resolving private-law relationships involving a foreign element, both in the context of conflict-of-law rules and in determining international jurisdiction. Although EU regulations and multilateral instruments adopted under the auspices of the Hague Conference on Private International Law have tended to move away from this criterion in favour of more factual connecting factors, its relevance remains preserved through its continued presence in domestic legislation and bilateral treaties. This article addresses the issue of nationality as a legal connecting factor and explores the question of whether the assumption, that an individual should, for the purposes of international private and procedural law, be considered exclusively a national of a single state, can be regarded as a generally applicable rule across the entire field and all norms of international private and procedural law.

The article deals with a specific part of the Slovak constitutional system, namely the unwritten sources of constitutional norms. The authors set two scientific objectives in the article. The first one is to present in more detail the problems related to the definition of individual unwritten sources of constitutional norms. The essence of the problem of defining unwritten sources of constitutional norms is the unclear use of terms as well as the ambiguous determination of the boundaries between them. A part of this objective is to solve this problem. This means establishing clearer criteria for defining unwritten sources of constitutional norms and delineating their scope. In the paper, the authors focus not only on theoretical issues related to unwritten sources of constitutional norms, but also on the specific practice of constitutional actors – constitutional bodies. The second objective is the use and application of the developed theoretical foundations in specific constitutional situations which are presented and analysed.