Обичаят като източник на правото в България XV-XX в.
Custom as the Source of Law in Bulgaria, 15th to 20th Century

Summary/Abstract: Specific features in the historical development of the Bulgarian ethnos gave custom the importance of a basic and only source of law over a prolonged period. Regardless of the complex and painful process of contact, adaptation and even acceptance of institutions and forms of life alien to the Bulgarian national spirit in the days of Ottoman bondage, custom as the creation of the people and the reflection of the national legal view of life maintained its importance as a source of law. Its manifestation within the framework of the family, the Bulgarian community and the guilds and its continued use led to the differentiation of a specific category of customary norms. The Ottoman state assigned a restricted range of use to custom in the Bulgarian community and in the guilds. However, owing to their traditional character and continuity in the material and spiritual national culture, custom regulated marital, family, contractual and other relations among the population and the guilds in the Bulgarian community, in the ordering of internal economic rules and in relations between members of the guilds. Custom retained its importance as a source of law for a short time even after the liberation from Ottoman rule and the acceptance of bourgeois legislation, even though its importance did not go beyond the function of bringing the new legislation as close as it was possible to the intransient creative principle of a national understanding of law.

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