THE VOLYN STATUTE OF 1566 AS A MODEL OF THE PROGRESSIVE EUROPEAN LEGAL TRADITION

Abstract

It is noted that the statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of 1529, 1566, 1588 are the codes of laws of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, created on the basis of local Lithuanian, Belarusian, Ukrainian (Russian) law and court practice corresponding to the latter. The sources of the Statutes were also the provisions of «Ruska Pravda», German and Polish judges and certain norms of Roman law. The most progressive and perfect codes of law of the 16th century, in contrast to the judges of Europe and Russia (which legitimized the norms of criminal law only), united together the main provisions of state, civil, family, land, military, criminal, procedural law and declared the validity of unified legal norms on the entire territory of the state – the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. These were also the first completely secular codes of law in Europe, which did not include the canons of church law and defended, first of all, the personal, property and political rights of princes and nobility. political ideas: the responsibility of courts before the law, the right of a person to legal protection, the personal responsibility of the offender (and not his family), equal rights of representatives of different ethnic groups, confessions and social statuses, protection of the personality and property rights of women, etc. It is emphasized that the second Lithuanian charter is often called «Volyn» in historical and legal science, since the Volyn nobility, who increased and consolidated their rights and privileges, played an important and special role in its conclusion. The Statute of 1566 at a high level of codification technology completed the development of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a legal state, confirming the cycle of reforms that preceded the announcement of the Statute itself. It was concluded that, among other things, the Statute of 1566 clearly defined the main powers of the supreme ruler of the state of the Grand Duke and actually carried out an administrative reform in the Great Kingdom of Lithuania, provided for the separation of the judicial branch of power through the functioning of county courts (zemsky courts, city courts, subchamber courts), equalized in the rights of princes-magnates and nobility, approved the idea of a state noble state, unified different legal terminology and gave absolute priority to written law.