Establishment of National Legal Systems in Post-Ottoman South Eastern Europe: Deconstruction, Formation and Transfer of Normativity

The historical region of South Eastern Europe in the post-ottoman period was characterized by an amalgam of old and new law, of traditional, transformed, and transferred normativity. All these normative strata overlapped in a complex way. At the same time, they were embedded in the process of national state-building, thereby facing its concomitant problems of legitimacy. The research project at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History aims at reconstructing this intricate legal-historical realm of change.