Transylvania’s legal history forms part of the Hungarian identity, Justice Minister László Trócsányi said at the launch of the book on the subject-matter held on 12 March 2018 in Budapest.
The Minister highlighted that the appreciation, and if necessary re-discovery, of the values of the past form part of our constitutional identity.
For years the Ministry of Justice has maintained close cooperation with law faculties, including the law faculty of the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania. This important, valuable and long overdue publication which also covers the history of legal education in Transylvania is the result of that cooperation, he pointed out. Mr Trócsányi said: “Our identity is in this book”.
University professor Szalayné Erzsébet Sándor, deputy ombudsman for the protection of the rights of national minorities living in Hungary described the book as a major professional achievement.
University professor Barna Mezey, head of the Legal History Department of the Eötvös Lóránd University, one of the authors of the book highlighted that this is the first comprehensive work on the topic.
University professor Emőd Veress, editor and co-author of the book, Director of the Law School of the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania said regarding the work completed that there is now a comprehensive overview on the topic which also indicates what is still missing. The work must continue.
The book of more than five hundred pages entitled A Legal History of Transylvania which was published by the Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) publishing house Forum Iuris under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice is the work of 17 authors and 9 readers. It processes the legal history of Transylvania from ancient times to the present day. Separate chapters are dedicated to the Roman province Dacia, the Migration Period and the period before the foundation of the state, the Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages, the period of the independent principality after the Turkish conquest, the Habsburg Empire from 1690, Transylvania living on as part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy from 1867, the territory which became part of Romania as of 1918, and the period leading through the fall of communism in 1990 to the present day.