Teisės skirstymo į viešąją ir privatinę idėja bei jos reikšmė Lietuvos Statutų sistemai

Abstract

The article is aimed at describing the historical development of teaching law division into public and private before the end of the 16th century on the analysis of the law doctrine of that time and also at determining the importance of the aforesaid division for the law system of Lithuanian Statutes on the grounds of the obtained conclusions. This scientific research allows stating that there were separate utterances on division of law into public and private in the Roman law. However, this division had no systematic and functional importance in the positive law of that time. The teaching of division of law into public and private acquired theoretical and practical significance in the 16th century when the school of post-glossators was replaced by the school of humanists (i.e. the humanist trend in the science of law most widely spread among French lawyers). The essential changes in ideological and religious regulations of the 16th century had the greatest importance for formation of the attitude to division of law into public and private – the tendency to dissociate from the Church authorities by solving state problems and to look at the state, first of all, as an independent institution was becoming apparent. On the other hand, an attitude towards a man was changing. He started to be considered as an autonomous intelligent personality (Renaissance, humanism). Due to historical development of the Grand Principality of Lithuania (hereinafter referred to as GPL) especially favourable conditions to accept the idea of law dualism were created. The texts of Lithuanian Statutes attest that the teaching of Domicius Ulpianus was being developed and GPL obtained the meaning of systematization. In this sense the heritage of the GPL law proves the dependence of the Lithuanian law system on the tradition of the Western law. It should be notified that the boundary between the public and private law institutions was in the process of change in Lithuanian Statutes. It was determined by political, economic, social and other needs within a concrete stage of GPL development. The change in the priorities of values protected by GPL caused the relevant change in the range of public relations regulated by the public law. From the historical aspect there is no and there cannot be any distinct boundary between the public and private law, it is always relative as two poles to which certain laws are more or less attracted.