Drafting and adopting the Hungarian Civil Code was the greatest challenge in the so-called Transleithanian area during the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy. Despite the dilligent work of the main government body involved in the legislative works, the Ministry of Justice, the draft of the Civil Code (1900) was brought only for public discussion until the end of the 19th century. In the centre of the author's attention is a brief insight into the commencement of the codification process during the dualist era which started right after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, by the decision of the Ministry of Justice to swiftly initiate the civil substantial law codification in 1869. The readers will get acquainted with the historical and processual side of the works on the Civil Code Draft of 1900 which, even after hundred years, is still an interesting object of studies for its originality, legal creativity, and European nature which reflected the fact that the Hungarian civilists and lawmakers were well-established in the European community of lawyers.
The fundamental indissolubility of valid and consummated Catholic marriage anticipated the contemporary professional (canon law) and lay view of Catholic or even mixed marriages. The author concentrated on the late medieval Hungarian or Slovak realities, which she looked at in her study through the selected case of the Huber couple from Pressburg, heard at all levels of the Hungarian ecclesiastical courts, beginning with the Metropolitan Court of the Archdiocese of Esztergom, located in Trnava at the beginning of the 19th century. It provided her with a (micro)probe method to present a more realistic picture of the emergence, resolution, gradation or, on the contrary, hibernation of marital conflicts, controversies and the very coexistence in the marital couple cohabitation of a man and a woman than the contemporary professional and scientific canonical and civil writings of the late modern period would have postulated in a somewhat idealistic canonical manner. However, the study begins by noting the post-Tridentine (post-Conciliar) legal basis for the separation of the spouses, which made it possible to address both the marital cause in question and its other legal and social implications (especially the property status of the separated spouses). The author has decided to bring the topic of matrimonial disputes into the scientific discourse by way of legal-historical research only to one of the institutes of the matrimonial personal law of the Catholic Church – separation or also called separation from the table and bed, which, although it did not dissolve the marriage, but which allowed the spouses to separate temporarily or even permanently and to find a new modus vivendi.
On the threshold of a new historical period, after the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic, Slovak society became even more interested in marginalized social groups. One of them was the legally and socially ostracized group of illegitimate (“illegal”) children. The value-laden and intriguing debate from the legal point of view on the status of the illegitimate child led to gradual changes in Czechoslovak legislation and jurisprudence. Fundamental legal amendments got adopted to change the centuries-long degraded legal and social status of illegitimate children. They regulated social care, health care, guardianship, family matters, and especially the social and legal protection of illegitimate children. The law gradually granted a certain degree of protection to both illegitimate children and their mothers, even though their social status changed very slowly in the Slovak rural environment. The author presents the developing historical legal and social discourse and social and legal practice related to illegitimate children, which gradually led to the elimination of their unequal status compared to legitimate children.
The authors discuss the legal emancipation of the Slovak or Hungarian woman in family and property relations (as both these relations determine the status of each human individual) which took place in two stages; Firstly, it was while the first original medieval law, which was preserved even in the modern concept of the patriarchal family and subordinate position of women, was effective. Secondly, it was during the century when modern law was born, namely from 1848 to 1948, when women became independent and emancipated in both social and legal relations. The authors identify the key legal norms that helped to create and configure the mile-stones on the slow and long road to female emancipation and transformation of the social and legal awareness of Slovak society. The ambition of the authors is to point out the general conclusions about the status of Slovak woman, reached after reviewing the legal norms, court decisions and jurisprudence.
Legal regulation of Catholic marriage in the modern period may be found in older Canon Law compilations and their rules were revised and dogmatically supported by the legislation of the Council of Trent. The study examines the post-Tridentine legal basis of the fundamental institutions of personal marriage law of the Catholic Church that enabled the solving various matrimonial disputes (causae matrimonii) and their other legal and social consequences. Following the doctrine on the principal of the indissoluble sui generis matrimonial contract, the authors presented the substantial law and procedural law aspects of Canon Law institutions, which were applied while declaring a marriage null and void or dissolving it. They paid attention also to the then often applied matrimonial institution – separation from table and bed that did not cause termination of marriage, but enabled the married couple to permanently or temporarily interrupt matrimonial cohabitation. In addition to theoretical research they proceeded also to search in the Slovak private archives of the Catholic Church (specifically in the Archive of the Archdiocese of Trnava) for the purpose of proper illustration of the presented Canon Law regulations of the late modern period with the probes into the familiaristics of Church courts in the Kingdom of Hungary at the beginning of the 19th century.
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