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Call for papers: International Workshop “Legal Survivals in Central and Eastern Europe: Socio-Legal Perspectives on Public and Private Law”Riga Graduate School of Law, 15-16 June 2024
Deadline for abstracts: 15 April 2024
The goal of the workshop is to bring together sociologists of law, legal comparatists, legal historians, as well as political scientists interested in legal institutions to reflect on concrete examples (case studies) of‘ legal survivals’ in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), using especially socio-legal methods of research. By legal survivals, we mean those legal institutes (clusters of legal norms) that have survived in the legal system despite a change of political regime (e.g. from communism to democracy and the rule of law) and sovereignty (e.g. Soviet domination to regaining of independence) which entailed economic, ideological and societal transformations (Watson, 2001; Mańko, 2023). Some legal survivals were initially legal transplants, i.e., introduced into a legal system from a foreign one (cf. Watson, 1993), but others are the product of local legal development.
During the course of the 20th century, the legal space of Central and Eastern Europe has undergone tectonic shifts in political and legal systems (Mańko, Tacik & Cercel, 2024). The end of World War I meant the emergence of not least six new independent states in the CEE region (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary), all of which enjoyed two decades of independence, followed by a transformation to ‘real socialism,’ coupled (with the exception of Yugoslavia) with occupation or at least domination by the Soviet Union. The demise of communism at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s brought about not only the regaining of sovereignty and independence but also the emergence of new political entities (e.g. Slovakia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Moldavia, Ukraine), which did not have extensive traditions of statehood or legal institutions. A new wave of legal transplants occurred when the countries of the region decided to join Western European structures of economic integration and had to implement into their legal systems a number of hitherto unknown legal institutes, such as the regulation of timeshares, unfair terms in consumer contracts or consumer credit, to mention examples from private law (Cafaggi et al., 2010). In the sphere of public law, an intense borrowing of constitutional models, for instance, from Germany, occurred with the creation of constitutional courts and the judicialisation of fundamental rights (Perju, 2012; Halmai, 2019; Dupré, 2003). Legal transplants have also been present in administrative law (Bieś-Srokosz, 2020). Legal transplants remained the key feature of the development of CEE legal cultures (Mańko, 2017), which seems to be typical for the region, at least since the 19th century (Giaro, 2023).
Against this background of intense legal borrowing both from the West (the period between WW1 and WW2), then from the East (period of Soviet domination or occupation), and then again from the West (integration with Western structures), there has also been a less visible current of legal continuity, at least on the level of the legal form (cf. Mańko, 2023). For instance, pre-WW2 liberal private law codes survived, at least during the initial decades of actually existing socialism (e.g. the Code of Obligations in Poland, in force until 1965, Austrian law in parts of Yugoslavia, French-modelled codul civili in Romania). Then, following the post-communist transformation, many legal institutes of the socialist era remained, especially when it comes to housing law (housing cooperatives) and land law (perpetual usufruct and its equivalents), but also procedural law (e.g. prosecutor’s powers in civil proceedings in Poland) (Mańko, 2016). Moreover, some of such Soviet legal transplants were even revived (e.g. the ‘extraordinary revision’ in Poland, introduced in 1950, and revived in 2018 as the ‘extraordinary complaint’). One can ask to what extent this specific interplay of legal transplants and legal survivals contributes to the unique legal identity of the CEE (Mańko, Škop & Štěpáníková, 2016; Cercel, Mercescu & Sadowski, 2024).
The workshop aims to bring together socio-legal papers discussing concrete case studies of legal survivals in Central and Eastern Europe, especially in the post-WW2 and post-transformation (post-1989) periods. The papers should deal with concrete institutions of public (constitutional, administrative, criminal) or private law. We will also consider proposals for papers focused on the socio-legal aspects of the survival of concrete features of legal culture, such as modes of legal reasoning (cf. Kühn, 2011; Cserne, 2020, 2024), or features of legal education at university and professional level (cf. Czarnota et al., 2017, 2018; Stambulski, 2019).
Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to Piotr Ekchardt ([email protected]) by 15 April 2024.
We will notify you about the acceptance of papers by 1 May 2024. To cover the costs of lunches, we foresee a moderate fee of EUR 40.
Directly after the workshop, we intend to prepare a book proposal under the working title Legal Survivals in Central and Eastern Europe: Socio-Legal Perspectives. The proposal will consist of approximately 10 chapters (of 8,000-10,000 words each) based on selected papers. We are aiming for an international publishing house with a broad distribution (we will make a choice depending on the exact profiles of the contributions).
Organising team:
Professor Adam Czarnota (Riga Graduate School of Law)
Dr. habil. Rafał Mańko (Central European University, Democracy Institute)
Dr. Piotr Eckhardt (University of Wrocław, Centre for Legal Education and Social Theory)
References
Bieś-Srokosz, P. (2020). Legal transplants w prawie administracyjnym. Roczniki Nauk Prawnych 30(1): 21-31.
Cafaggi, F., et al. Europeanization of Private Law in Central and Eastern Europe Countries (CEECs): Preliminary Findings and Research Agenda, EUI LAW, 2010/15.
Cercel, C., Mercescu A., Sadowski, M.M. (2024). Law, Culture and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Engagement. Abigndon: Routledge.
Cserne, P. (2020). Discourses on Judicial Formalism in Central and Eastern Europe: Symptom of an Inferiority Complex? European Review 28(6): 880-891
Cserne, P. (2024). Judicial Formalism and Regional Legal Identity in Central and Eastern Europe. In Cercel, C., Mercescu A., Sadowski, M.M. (2024). Law, Culture and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Engagement. Abigndon: Routledge.
Czarnota, A., Paździora, M., Stambulski, M. (2017). Tiresome necessity: Reasons for starting the law studies in WPAE UWr and their assessment. Wrocław: CLEST.
Czarnota, A., Paździora, M., Stambulski, M. (2018). The Hidden Curriculum in Legal Education. (2018). The Hidden Curriculum in Legal Education. Krytyka Prawa. Niezależne Studia Nad Prawem, 10(2), 114-129.
Dupré, C. (2003). Importing the Law in Post-Communist Transitions: The Hungarian Constitutional Court and the Right to Human Dignity. Oxford: Hart.
Giaro, T. (2023). The Wave of Transfers: An East-European Chapter in the Civil Law Tradition. Comparative Law Review 14, 33-58.
Halmai, G. (2019). Constitutional Transplants. In: The Cambridge Companion to Comparative Constitutional Law. Cambridge Companions to Law. Cambridge: CUP.
Kühn, Z. (2011). The Judiciary in Central and Eastern Europe: Mechanical Jurisprudence in Transformation? Brill.
Mańko, R., Škop, M., Štěpáníková, M. (2016). Carving Out Central Europe As A Space Of Legal Culture: A Way Out Of Peripherality? Wroclaw Review Of Law, Administration & Economics 6.2: 4-28.
Mańko, R. (2016). “Demons of the Past”? Legal Survivals of the Socialist Legal Tradition in Contemporary Polish Private Law’ in Law and Critique in Central Europe: Questioning the Past, Resisting the Present. Oxford: Counterpress. Ed. by R. Mańko et al.
Mańko, R. (2017). Legal Transfers in Europe Today: Still ‘Modernisation Through Transfer’? in Mutual Interaction Between Contemporary Systems and Branches of Law in European Countries, 139-155. Częstochowa: Podobiński Publishing. Ed. P. Bieś-Srokosz et al.
Mańko, R. (2023). Legal Survivals and the Resilience of Juridical Form. Law & Critique (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-023-09357-2
Mańko, R., Tacik, P., Cercel., C. (2024). ‘Introduction: Law, Populism, and the Political in Semi-Peripheral Central and Eastern Europe’ in Mańko et al. (eds), Law, Populism, and the Political in Central and Eastern Europe. Abingdon: Birkbeck Law Press/Routledge.
Perju, V. (2012). Constitutional Transplants, Borrowing, and Migrations In The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law. Oxford: OUP.
Stambulski, M. (2019). Tiresome rite. Advocate and legal counsel application in Poland. Wrocław: CLEST.
Watson, A. (1993). Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law. Atlanta: Georgia University Press.
Watson, A. (2001). Society and Legal Change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Rīga, Rātslaukums 1, Rīga, LV-1050, Latvija,Riga, Latvia
