János Zlinszky

János Zlinszky (born March 7, 1928 in Budapest ; † June 18, 2015 ) was a Hungarian legal scholar , legal historian and university professor. He was considered the doyen of Roman law in Hungary.

Live and act

After graduation in 1946 Zlinszky 1947 began at the Eötvös Loránd University studying in Budapest law . Promoted by Professor Géza Marton , Zlinszky became interested in Roman law early on. As a student, he translated the Twelve Tables law into Hungarian. In 1951, however, shortly before his graduation, he was expelled from the university by the communist regime and deported to Zsáka , because he came from an upper-class legal family and was therefore considered a " class enemy ". Only after completing military and labor service, working as a carpenter for several years and getting married was he allowed to return to Budapest and continue his studies. There he passed his state examinations in 1957 and received his diploma. He then worked as a lawyer in several state-owned companies until 1968, and from 1968 to 1983 as a lawyer.

It was not until 1983 that Zlinszky was able to devote himself to his academic career again. In that year he took up an assistant position at the University of Miskolc . There he quickly acquired the formal requirements to be able to teach by submitting various, in part already completed, writings. In 1984 he received his doctorate as a candidate of science , in 1990 he received the highest scientific degree from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences . In the same year he took up a professorship for Roman law in Miskolc. He held this professorship parallel to his work as a judge at the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Hungary , where he worked from 1990 to 1998. In addition to his actual professorship in Miskolc, Zlinszky was from 1995 to 2000 dean of the law faculty of the Péter Pázmány Catholic University, which was also founded on his initiative . In 2002 János Zlinszky retired.

Zlinszky devoted his research to Roman law and its influence on the development of Hungarian law. He coined the theory of the “silent reception” of Roman law in Hungary, according to which Roman legal principles found their way into Hungarian laws and jurisprudence only slowly and gradually. In addition, Zlinszky devoted himself generally to the reception of Roman law, especially in the German-speaking areas. He wrote the article on Hungary in Helmut Coing's handbook on sources and literature on recent European private law history . It is thanks to Zlinszky's commitment that Roman law found its way into teaching at Hungarian universities. As a constitutional judge, he played a decisive role in establishing the rule of law in post-socialist Hungary. In 1993 the Austrian Academy of Sciences accepted him as a corresponding member for his services to science . In 2014 the University of Miskolc awarded him an honorary doctorate .

Works (selection)

• A tizenkéttáblás törvény töredékei [The fragments of the Twelve Tables] . Budapest 1991
• Római büntetőjog [Roman criminal law] . Miskolc 1992
• Állam és jog az ősi Rómában [State and Law in Archaic Rome] . Budapest 1996 (dissertation)
• Ius publicum . Budapest 1996
• Science and Jurisdiction: Sources and Literature in the History of Private Law in Hungary in the 19th Century . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 978-3-465-02838-3 .
• Ius privatum . Budapest 1998

literature

• Gábor Bánrévy (ed.): Iustum, aequum, salutare. Emlékkönyv Zlinszky János tiszteletére . PPKE, Budapest 1998, ISBN 963-04-9982-7 (Festschrift).
• Attila Horváth, András Koltay, Gábor Máthé (eds.): Sapienti iniuria fi eri non potest. Ünnepi tanulmányok Zlinszky János tiszteletére . Gondolat Kiadó, Budapest 2009 (Festschrift).
• Nadja El Beheiri, Katalin Gönczi. In: Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History , Romance Studies Department. 2016, pp. 666-669; Obituary.

Web links

• János Zlinszky at the Hungarian Constitutional Court
• Obituary (PDF) at scielo.org.za