Election of the Local Court Members in the 19th Century City of Osijek

Abstract

During the reign of Croatian Ban (Viceroy) Ivan Mažuranić (1873–1880), numerous reforms were implemented in the administration, the school system and the judiciary, since the political programme of his rule was based on building a modern legal infrastructure of Croatian autonomy. Already during the first year of his rule, Ban Ivan Mažuranić proposed to the Parliament the Act on Judicial Authority (Zakon o vlasti sudačkoj), which was adopted already next year, in 1874, to be considered one of the fundamental acts of the Croatian autonomous legal system. Aiming to disburden the judiciary in the first instance, in 1876, Ban Mažuranić followed the Act on Local Courts and Procedures (Zakon o mjesnim sudovima i postupku pred njima) to establish a court in each municipality authorised to deal with disputes over small sums of money. Although these were lay courts with features of administrative authority, this did not in any way threaten their position as a judicial authority. In practice, local courts acted as an effective and almost free system of the laity that disburdened greatly the judiciary and opened the way to modernisation of the Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia according to European standards of a modern civil state.