After abandoning the monopoly of the Marxist methodology and, therefore, the dictates of the positivist legal understanding, it is now possible to revise some concepts related to the history of national law. Today’s interpretation of law as a complex and multilevel socio-cultural phenomenon, which should not be reduced to the statist dogma, allows speaking about the continuous duration of the existence of law in Ukrainian society – Ukrainian law, regardless of the presence/absence of own statehood in a particular period of time.

This article aims at determining the general features and peculiarities of Ukrainian law in the second half of the XIV – first half of the XVII century, and its place and role in the establishment of the legal system of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita).

From the standpoint of post-classical approaches to understanding of law, the ontology of law is implemented in legal provisions, in individual and social legal consciousness and legal culture, and in legal relations. Therefore, some modes of existence of law do not depend on whether a society has its own statehood. Lithuanian – Rus’ law applied in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was underlain by the Rus’/Ukrainian legal tradition. The basis of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s legal system rested upon legal provisions, institutions and principles which were formed and functioned in the law of Kyivan Rus’ and the State of Galicia-Volhynia. Rus’/Ukrainian legal consciousness determined the lines and the specifics of law development in the second half of the XIV – first half of the XVII century, and Ukrainian lawyers and statesmen were involved in the creation of written law. Over the XV–XVI centuries, Lithuanian-Russian law evolved from medieval to early modern law; it developed in a pan-European way, being influenced by Roman law and European urban law (in the Magdeburg law version), absorbing the advanced humanistic ideas and values formed during the Renaissance and Reformation period but retaining the Rus’/Ukrainian basis. The impetus to the emergence of new legal institutions was given by new social, political, and cultural realities formed in the State through the efforts of the Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Belarusian peoples; the provisions borrowed were organically intertwined with the general legal content, not only having an effect on the legal consciousness of Ukrainian society but also undergoing a certain transformation in legal relations which were unfolding in Ukrainian territory, under the influence of legal psychology of Ukrainians.

Consequently, during the second half of the XIV – first half of the XVII century, law of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which rested upon the Old Rus’ (Ukrainian and Belarusian) legal heritage, underwent consistent evolution, and the latter affected legal consciousness, legal culture and legal relations. This law is equally the property of Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Lithuanians. Therefore, the term “Ukrainian law of the Lithuanian (Polish-Lithuanian) period” is a well-defined one in the context of the legal reality of Ukrainian lands of those times.

Bibliography

Authored books

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Edited and translated books

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Journal articles

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22. Zazuliak Yu, ‘Remeslo superarbitra. Shliakhetski konflikty ta poliubovni zamyrennia u Ruskomu voievodstvi pochatku XVI st.’ [‘Profession of Chief Arbitrator. Conflicts among the Noble and Amicable Reconciliations in Rus’ Voivodeship of the Early XVI Century’] (2007) 7 Sotsium. Almanakh sotsialnoi istorii 43-57 (in Ukrainian).