Original scientific paper
Croatian Legal History and the Teaching of Legal History at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb from 1776 to the Present
Dalibor Čepulo
; Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Content concerning Croatian legal history was taught from 1868 as a marginal part of the course in General legal history, which was likely introduced as a substitute for a course in national legal history. A special department and course in Croatian legal history was set up only in 1911, mainly for political reasons and due to an insufficiently developed scientific basis. From the disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy to the present day the title of the course has changed as many as nine times, which usually reflected the changes in the political entities occupying the territory and their respective constitutional orders. After the formation of the new Yugoslav state in 1918, the course purported to cover the legal history of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1920-1941), Croatian legal history (1941-1946), the national and legal histories of the Yugoslav peoples (1946-1991), the history of the Croatian state and law (1991-2005), and Croatian legal history in the Central European context (from 2005 onwards). However, until 1955 the content of the course actually pertained to Croatian legal history for the most part, supplemented by content relating to the history of the law of the Slavic peoples or to Serbian legal history. Croatian legal history was also the most prominent part of the course among the legal histories of the Yugoslav federation in the period from 1946 to 1991. It is evident from experience that, considering its complex development, Croatian legal history can only be presented within the context of its environment. Since its inception, (Croatian) legal history has functioned as part of the corpus of legal studies, but has been largely influenced by the teaching of history in terms of methodology, and has used historical research as its raw material, thus broadening its reach. Even though it emerged in a void, over the course of the hundred years of its development, Croatian legal history has grown into a mature academic discipline.
Keywords
legal education; history of ideas; Croatian legal history
Hrčak ID:
116242
URI
Publication date:
30.12.2013.
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