Private Law in Former Socialist States

More than three decades after the fall of state socialism, certain legal institutions forged during the socialist period continue to shape private law across Central and Eastern Europe. This volume identifies and analyses case studies of 'legal survivals' — legal forms which, though created under state socialism, endured the political, socio-economic, and cultural upheaval of the 1989 transformation and remain operative within contemporary capitalist legal orders.

Building on the insights of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Karl Renner into the persistence of legal forms beyond the conditions that produced them, the book develops and applies a theory of 'nomostasis' — a term coined from the Greek nomos (law) and stasis (persistence) — to denote the endurance of old legal forms after revolution, transition, or other profound societal change. Although legal survivals are familiar in legal cultures founded on long traditions, such as the common law or Roman-law-based civil law, the vestiges of twentieth-century state socialism have received only scattered scholarly attention. Bringing together sociologists of law, legal historians, and comparative lawyers, the volume reveals remarkable continuities in institutions of property, family, and contract law across the region, and raises fresh questions about the wider relationship between law, society, and the economy.

This book will appeal to sociologists of law, comparative lawyers, and legal theorists, as well as to political scientists and area studies specialists working on Central and Eastern Europe.