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  5. Historical origins of rule-making activity: medieval national experience

Almanac of law. Issue 15 (2024), pages 405–410.

DOI: 10.33663/2524-017X-2024-15-597-405-410

Rominskyi Ye. V.
Historical origins of rule-making activity: medieval national experience

The historical, terminological and procedural aspects of the formation of rule-making activity in Ancient Rus as the origins of the rule-making process of Ukrainian legal culture are considered. Attention is drawn to the use in the Middle Ages of the words “zakon” (law), “zvychay” (custom), “ustav” (statute), “gramota” (charter) in the meaning of certain types of normative acts.

It is noted that although the completeness of the rule-making process was in the hands of the prince, and both his normative acts and certain provisions of judgments became the effective norms of law, but it often became publicly available only after a certain kind of codification: the introduction of these norms by a lawyer into the texts of legal collections. Accordingly, the role of collections of a legal nature is shown, in particular the “Mirylo Pravedne” («Righteous Measure»), the so-called Pushkin collection and a legal collection from the convolute known as the IV Troickyi (Trinity) manuscript, etc. in the legal culture of Ancient Rus.

A number of features inherent in norm-making in Ancient Rus through the lens of collections of legal texts are highlighted: the limited number of princely statutes in their composition; the special character of the formation of collections, when they were supplemented with various prescriptions, which were inserted directly into the text of older documents; oriented to the practical needs of the court, when a significant number of novellas and additions, excerpts from ancient foreign legal texts, etc. relate to current legal issues; the short stories entered in the anthologies were often court sentences; anonymous and “fake” legal texts of a regulatory nature are repeatedly found on the pages of legal collections. A medieval jurist, who remains a mystery to us, considered it expedient to disguise his legal ideas under prescriptions or guidelines of a legal nature of eminent persons of the past.

These features highlight a number of important features of the legal culture and legal outlook of the inhabitants of medieval Ukraine in general. Thus, one should call the gradual «inheritance» of ancient Roman, Byzantine, Jewish, Bulgarian, etc. law as part of its traditional law. At the same time, there was a reinterpretation of norms and prescriptions with quite frequent «nationalization» of them in accordance with local tradition. Further, the presence of respect not for a separate «law», i.e. a normative-legal act of higher power, but for all law as a part of culture is clearly revealed. An exclusively axiological, value-based attitude to law sets it apart from a number of other social norms. As a result of this, the heredity of law was not formed for a long time, i.e. normative legal acts had limited universality, only within the limits of guarantee by the current ruler and when they became part of a large legal heritage, part of culture.

Key words: Medieval Ukraine, East Slavic state formations, Ancient Rus’, Medieval Law, Ancient Rus’ Law, law-making treaty, Source of Law, Legal history.

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Yevhen Viktorovych Rominsky,
Researcher
of the Department of Historical and Legal Studies
of the V. M. Koretsky Institute of State and Law
of the NAS of Ukraine
ORCID: 0000-0002-0897-0146

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