Word of the Editorial Board
Abstract
The University of Belgrade Faculty of Law has always nurtured a strong tradition of studying legal history. Names like Teodor Taranovski, Aleksandar Solovjev, Albert Vajs, Dragomir Stojčević, Ljubica Kandić, Jelena Danilović or Obrad Stanojević have left an indelible mark in this scholarly discipline – but also, for sure, in the formation of generations of lawyers who had the privilege to listen to their lectures. Fortunately, these greats left behind worthy heirs, who have also taught the members of this editorial board. Although nowadays, due to short-sighted pragmatism, the number of legal history courses at many law faculties in the country and abroad is decreasing or their status is reduced to electives instead of compulsory ones, the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law has preserved a strong trinity of compulsory subjects – Roman (private) law, Comparative legal traditions and Serbian legal history; these are supported by Ecclesiastical law and Rhetoric, which are perhaps not historical in the classical sense, but are nevertheless closely related to history. We should not forget either that the Faculty is also the home of the Forvm Romanvm – the Club of Friends of Roman Law and Antiquity, which gathers professors and students interested in the culture of antiquity and legal history in general almost every Friday night, where many renowned Serbian and foreign scholars have given their lectures, and which is celebrating its splendid 50th anniversary this year. Finally, the recently deceased Professor Alan Watson, a world-renowned comparativist and legal historian, started a foundation bearing his name at our Faculty in 2005, which awards the best student papers dealing with the main theme of Watson’s work – legal transplants.
The establishment of the “Herald of Legal History”, therefore, represents just another step forward in a series begun a long time ago, but a step we are very proud of nevertheless. The aim of this journal is to give undergraduate and postgraduate students (not necessarily of law faculties!) who are interested in legal history the opportunity to publish their work, but, at the same time, to attract those whose love for this field has not yet developed into a clear research interest. Therefore, the “Herald of Legal History” is a herald in two ways: both in the sense of a journal that will spread news from the realm of our discipline, but also in the sense that all the young authors who publish their texts in it are heralds of a new era of research. Legal history deals with antiquity and the past – but it is the voices of young people that are its future. We want to give them a chance to be heard!
We are very glad to be supported on the way to that goal by two more endeavours that give strength to legal history. One of them is the aforementioned Alan Watson Foundation: starting this year, the winning work from the Foundation’s competition will be published in the Herald, instead of on the Foundation’s website. This issue already contains the winning paper from the contest for the 2019/20 school year – the author of which, by coincidence, is one of the members of this editorial board. The second is the international student conference Iustoria, which, we hope, would be held regularly at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, starting from this year, and whose participants will be given the opportunity to publish their papers in our journal.
Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic disrupted all events, including these. Classes at our faculty were held online for most of the second semester, lectures at the Forvm were cancelled, and Iustoria was postponed from March to October this year. For the same reasons, the preparation of the first issue of our journal took longer than expected; we assume that it will see the light of day, instead of in the summer, only in the fall of 2020. Still, better late than never – in these circumstances, the most important thing is to begin the publication, and there will be time for the publishing schedule to normalize. As we write these lines, we are receiving new papers for the second issue of the Herald – and we invite all others who are interested to send us their texts!
The Herald publishes the usual types of papers that one can find in other academic journals: primarily articles that are the research work of students, but also book reviews (even of older books), as well as various event-related texts (reports from conferences and round tables, obituaries, etc.). However, there are also two less common categories: translations of articles by renowned academic authors or of source texts, done by students (from any language into Serbian or English) and interviews with renowned scholars in the field of legal history, also conducted by students. With this, we want to stimulate students to express their interest in legal history in any way that suits them best!
In the end, we would like to thank everyone who made the publication of the Herald possible. First of all, to the members of the Department of Legal History of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, who initiated its establishment, and to Professor Zoran Mirković, Dean of the Faculty, who passed the decision to found the journal and appointed us as members of the editorial board. Then, to all the professors who supported the journal as members of the extended editorial board, and contributed their valuable advice to make it better, as well as to all who agreed to be reviewers for our journal and thus helped improve the quality of the papers published in it. To all those who participated in the work of shaping the journal in order for you to see it in the best possible shape – from cover design, through proofreading, to prepress. And, finally, we are most grateful to our authors – for being interested in legal history and for having passion and interest in scholarly work, sometimes from the first year of their undergraduate studies! Without all of you, this journal would not exist – so thank you very much, and stay with us! So that, over time, publishing the Herald would also become a beautiful and long tradition.
editorial board of the Herald of Legal History:
- Ass. Prof. Dr Nina Kršljanin, Editor-in-Chief
- David Vučinić, Deputy Editor-in-Chief
- Sava Vojnović, Đina Glavčić Kostić, Miloš Knežević, Anita Stanković, Đorđe Stepić
