Socialism and Legal History
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Routledge Research in Legal History SOCIALISM AND LEGAL HISTORY THE HISTORIES AND HISTORIANS OF LAW IN SOCIALIST EAST CENTRAL EUROPE Edited by Ville Erkkilä and Hans-Peter Haferkamp Socialism and Legal History This book focuses on the way in which legal historians and legal scientists used the past to legitimize, challenge and explain the socialist legal orders, which were backed by dictatorial governments. The volume studies legal historians and legal histories written in Eastern European countries during the socialist era after the Second World War. The book investigates whether there was a unified form of socialist legal historiography and, if so, what can be said of its common features. The individual chapters of this volume concentrate on the regimes that are situated between the Russian, and later Soviet, legal culture and the area covered by the German Civil Code. Hence, the geographical focus of the book is on East Germany, Russia, the Baltic states, Poland, and Hungary. The approach is transnational, focusing on the interaction and intertwinement of the then hegemonic communist ideology and the ideas of law and justice as they appeared in the writings of legal historians of the socialist legal orders. Such an angle enables concentration on the dynamics between politics and law as well as identities and legal history. Studying the socialist interpretations of legal history reveals the ways in which legal scholars, situated between legal renewal and political guidance, gave legitimacy to, struggled to come to terms with, and sketched the future of the socialist legal orders. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers working in the areas of legal history, jurisprudence, philosophy of law and European Studies. Ville Erkkilä is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for European Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. Hans-Peter Haferkamp is Full Professor of Private Law and History of German Law. He is the Director of the Institute of Modern History of Private Law, German and Rhenish Legal History, University of Cologne, Germany. Routledge Research in Legal History The Royal Prerogative and Constitutional Law A Search for the Quintessence of Executive Power Noel Cox Socialism and Legal History The Histories and Historians of Law in Socialist East Central Europe Edited by Ville Erkkilä and Hans-Peter Haferkamp See more at https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-in-Legal-History/ book-series/RRLEGHIST Socialism and Legal History The Histories and Historians of Law in Socialist East Central Europe Edited by Ville Erkkilä and Hans-Peter Haferkamp First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Ville Erkkilä and Hans-Peter Haferkamp; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Ville Erkkilä and Hans-Peter Haferkamp to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Erkkilä, Ville, 1978- editor. | Haferkamp, Hans-Peter, 1966- editor. Title: Socialism and legal history : the histories and historians of law in socialist East Central Europe / edited by Ville Erkkilä and Hans-Peter Haferkamp. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge research in legal history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020027216 (print) | LCCN 2020027217 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367414757 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367814670 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Law--Europe, Eastern--History. | Law--Europe, Central--History. | Socialism--Europe, Eastern--History. | Socialism--Europe, Central--History. Classification: LCC KJC510 .S63 2021 (print) | LCC KJC510 (ebook) | DDC 349.4709/045--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027216 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027217 ISBN: 978-0-367-41475-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0 367-41983-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-81467-0 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by MPS Limited, Dehradun Contents Contributors vii Preface x Introduction: Socialist interpretations of legal history 1 VILLE ERKKILÄ PART I Framing the socialist legal historiography 23 1 The transformations of some classical principles in socialist Hungarian civil law: The metamorphosis of bona fides and boni mores in the Hungarian Civil Code of 1959 25 ANDRÁS FÖLDI 2 We few, we happy few? Legal history in the GDR 43 MARTIN OTTO 3 Roman law studies in the USSR: An abiding debate on slaves, economy and the process of history 60 ANTON RUDOKVAS AND VILLE ERKKILÄ 4 Strategies of covert resistance: Teaching and studying legal history at the University of Tartu in the Soviet era 77 MARJU LUTS-SOOTAK 5 The Western legal tradition and Soviet Russia: The genesis of H. J. Berman’s Law and Revolution 98 ADOLFO GIULIANI vi Contents PART II Legal historians of socialist regimes 113 6 Juliusz Bardach and the agenda of socialist history of law in Poland 115 MARTA BUCHOLC 7 Valdemārs Kalniņš (1907–1981): The founder of Soviet legal history in Latvia 136 SANITA OSIPOVA 8 Getaway into the Middle Ages? On topics, methods and results of ‘socialist’ legal historiography at the University of Jena 148 ADRIAN SCHMIDT-RECLA AND ZARA LUISA GRIES 9 Roman law and socialism: Life and work of a Hungarian scholar, Elemér Pólay 165 ÉVA JAKAB Index 184 Contributors Marta Bucholc is a professor of sociology at Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Recht als Kultur’ in Bonn and at the University of Warsaw. Her research fields are historical sociology, intellectual history, sociology of law and sociology of knowledge. Her recent publications include ‘Law and Liberal Pedagogy in a Post-Socialist Society: The Case of Poland’, Journal of Modern European History, 2020 (forthcoming); ‘Schengen and the Rosary. Catholic religion and the postcolonial syndrome in Polish national habitus’, Historische Sozialforschung/Historical Social Research (2020) 45:1, 153–181; ‘Commemorative Lawmaking: Memory Frames of the Democratic Backsliding in Poland After 2015’, Hague Journal on the Rule of Law (2019) 11, 85–110. Ville Erkkilä is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. He works on the history of historiography, legal history of socialism and intellectual history of 20th century Europe. He is the author of the book Conceptual Change of Conscience. Franz Wieacker and German Legal Historiography 1933–1968 (Tübingen 2019). His current project is about post-Second World War land reforms in North Eastern Europe. András Földi is full professor of Roman law and comparative legal history at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest. He works mainly on Roman private law, including the continuity of Roman law tradition. He has published articles in German, Italian, English and French in journals of Roman law and legal history (e.g., Fundamina, Index, RIDA, SDHI, SZ Rom. Abt., TR) as well as in a number of Festschriften and other collective volumes. Adolfo Giuliani is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt. He works on historical epistemology (late- medieval and early modern judicial proof, interpretation and presumption), legal theory (20th century antiformalism) and the history of legal historiography. He is the author of two upcoming books: The Age of Presumptions. A Study of Jacopo Menochio’s De praesumptionibus (1587) and Changing Images of the Legal Past: Savigny, Kantorowicz and Glenn. viii Contributors Zara Luisa Gries (Ref. iur) and Adrian Schmidt-Recla (Prof. Dr. iur) are fellows of the Jena Research Centre for the Law of the German Democratic Republic of the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. They examine the private law of the German Democratic Republic—its preconditions, structures, doctrines and history. Gries graduated from Jena (2020) and is working on a doctoral thesis on ‘Mental Disorders in Socialist Law of the German Democratic Republic’. Schmidt-Recla graduated from Leipzig (1995), and he has focused on medieval and contemporary legal history, on medical law, on interferences and interfaces between medicine and law and on general German private law. His second book Kalte und warme Hand. Verfügungen von Todes wegen in mittelalterlichen Referenzrechtsquellen (Köln, Weimar, Wien, 2011) is regarded as a modern attempt to write a methodologically sound legal history of important and disputed institutions of German private law. Éva Jakab is a professor of legal history and head of the department of Roman law at the University of Szeged. She has lectured and published extensively on Roman law and legal history of the ancient world. She is the author of several monographs on legal history, and her research interests include ancient Roman law, legal papyrology, ancient comparative law and legal humanism. Marju Luts-Sootak is a professor of legal history at the University of Tartu. Her main research areas are history of law and legal scholarship in Estonia, in the former Baltic Sea provinces and in the Baltic Sea area, especially in Germany, Russia and the Nordic countries. Her teaching and research also concern the philosophy of law and the history of jurisprudence, as well as the theory and history of legal methodology. She has been a co-editor of the legal journal Forum Historiae Iuris (www.forhistiur.de) and is the editor-in-chief of the Estonian legal journals Juridica and Juridica International (www.