The Unification of Laws in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes / Yugoslavia

Rad predstavlja poseban pogled na jugoslovensku Kraljevinu, iz ugla stvaranja i primene prava. Odmah po proglašenju Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca (1. decembra 1918) izjednačenje zakona postavljeno je kao jedna od vrhovnih političkih vrednosti i glavni zadatak Vlade. Do donošenja Ustava (28. juna 1921), proces izjednačenja zakona tekao je putem donošenja uredbi “zakonskog značaja” (vladavina uredbi). Vidovdanskim ustavom predviđena su dva načina izjednačavanja zakona: legalizacijom ranijih uredbi i donošenjem zakona po predlogu Vlade od Zakonodavnog odbora (“malog parlamenta”) po skraćenom postupku. Ovaj zakonodavni postupak, sa kojim je Vlada ostala odlučujući zakonodavni činilac, nije poslužio cilju. Glavni zakoni (Krivični zakonik i zakonici o krivičnom i parničnom postupku) doneti su tek pod režimom diktature (1929). Građanski zakonik nije donet do kraja trajanja Kraljevine Jugoslavije, pa se građani “nisu osećali kao članovi jedne zajednice”. Isto je bilo u sferi izvršnog prava do 1938, a u pogledu okućja (zemljoradničkog minimuma) i kasnije. Izjednačenje zakona odvijalo se u senci sukoba srbijanskih i prečanskih pravnika (pravnika iz krajeva bivše Austro-Ugarske). Izjednačeni zakoni su doneti uglavnom suprotno gledištima srbijanskih pravnika. Kraljevina SHS je od zemlje sa šest pravnih područja postala zemlja u kojoj je jedan deo njenih građana (građani bivše Kraljevine Srbije) doveden u situaciju da živi pod “nasiljem” nametnutog prava. Žrtvovanje parlamentarizma od strane Srbijanaca, zarad izjednačenja zakona, okrenulo se protiv njih samih.This article provides a special look into the Yugoslav Kingdom from the standpoint of the creation and enforcement of law. Soon after the proclamation of the single Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1 December 1918), the unification of laws became one of the supreme political values and a priority task of the government. Until the adoption of the Constitution of 1921, the unification of laws took place by way of enactment of decrees of ‘legal importance’ (‘government of decrees’). According to the Constitution of 1921, there were two ways in which the unification of laws could be carried out: by legalizing former decrees and by passing laws by the legislative committee (“little parliament”) in a summary procedure. But the goal was not achieved that way. The principal laws (the criminal code and the codes of criminal and civil procedure, respectively) were passed under the regime of the dictatorship (1929). The Civil Code was not passed until the fall of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, so the citizens ‘did not feel as the members of the same community’ in that regard. The same was true in the field of executive law until 1938, and later concerning the homestead (farmer’s minimum). The unification of laws took place in the shadow of the conflict between Serbian lawyers and lawyers from the former Austria-Hungary. Unified laws were passed mainly regardless of the disagreement of Serbian lawyers. Many of institutes of law of former Kingdom of Serbia (limitation in the use of witnesses, limitation of the peasant\u27s benchmark ability, execution of the death penalty by a firing squad) were repealed by new Yugoslav laws. The Kingdom of SCS turned from being a country that consisted of six legal systems to a country in which a part of her citizens (citizens of the former Kingdom of Serbia) were forced to suffer the “violence” of the imposed laws. Serbians had sacrificed parliamentarism for the purpose of unifying laws, which eventually came at a great cost. The unification of laws indicated that Croats and Slovenes leaned towards a real union or that they did not want any kind of community with Serbians