The Consolidation of Hungarian Legal Practice with the Austrian Norms in 1861

A few months before the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in August 1849, Emperor Franz Joseph issued the Constitution of Olmütz, which suspended the Hungarian constitutional order. After 1850, the Viennese Government aimed to unify the legal system in the whole empire, and as part of the process, many Austrian legal norms were imposed by royal decrees upon the Hungarian territories. This led to fundamental changes in the country’s legal system (the customary law as “law in action” took precedence up until 1848), even though it happened unconstitutionally. The worsening state of affairs and the defeat in the Austro-Sardinian War led the Emperor to promulgate a new constitution which became known as the October Diploma in 1860. Accordingly, Hungary regained its former constitutional status, but Franz Joseph ordered the newly reinstated chief justice to assemble a council that should debate over the most pressing issues regarding the administration of justice. There, the most influential lawyers proposed that the Hungarian laws shall be restored – albeit with several compromises. Most members agreed that an absolute and immediate repeal of every Austrian legal norm would certainly violate the rights of the citizens. Therefore, even though this committee did not accept the validity of these laws, the majority of its members argued that some of them must remain in effect until the Parliament will reconvene. Consequently, the Austrian legal norms as “law in books” deeply influenced the “law in action” in Hungary for the years to come.