Serbian civil code is the most important, most famous and longest Serbian civil law act in recent history. It was known for a century, and many of his policies under different laws apply.
History
Serbian Civil Code is only the third European codification of civil law after France's Code Napoléon and the Civil Code of Austria, all adapted and based on Justinian I's legal system. It was originally known as the 1844 Civil Code of the Kingdom of Serbia. It regulated, among other things, the issues of private property, personal freedom, freedom of contracting, and the equality of parties in civil proceedings. The Code was written by the first president of the Matica Srpska, lawyer and writer Jovan Hadžić at the behest of Prince Miloš Obrenović, and it was based on the model of the Austrian and French codifications of civil law and the earliest judicial reforms by Justinian, particularly through the complete revision of all Roman laws, something that had never before been done. The total of Justinian's legislature is known today as the Corpus Juris Civilis. The 1844 Civil Code, written by Hadžić, was designed to protect owners of land. Hadžić was a true innovator for he envisaged success of the civil procedural law, that is of judicial system. Hadžić's code contained basic elements of civil understanding of institute of property and trading of property, that is contracts. Property and property transfer/trading were possible only if the judicial protection existed, and that protection was guaranteed under the 1840 Law of Arrangement of District Courts and after the Supreme Court came into being in 1846. In 1837, under pressure from the Russians and the Constitutionalist oligarchy to provide a constitution, Miloš Obrenović appointed the best Serbian judicial minds at the time, Jovan Hadžić, and one of the most influential lawyers in Austria, to draw up a draft to be submitted to a committee. Hadžić's Serbian Civil code is based on the Civil Code of Austria in abbreviated form, of course, with an introduction of the institution of Saint Sava`s Serbian Zakonopravilo and customary law. Hadžić drafted the Serbian Civil Code, which was accepted by the legislative committee and promulgated the code on the 25th of March 1844.
Changes
The rules of this Code were in use for many years after it went out of effect in 1946, until the adoption of separate laws for individual fields of civil law.
