IL CONTRIBUTO AL CAMPO GIURIDICO DEL POETA SERBO LAZA KOSTIĆ
LEGAL ACHIEVEMENTS OF FAMOUS SERBIAN POET LAZA KOSTIC

Summary/Abstract: Laza Kostic is not only a great Serbian poet, drama writer, translator, literary and theater critic, journalist, national tribune, politician, diplomat, philosopher and aesthete, but, as the most educated and dullest Serbian head of his time, he made a significant contribution to the legal field. Unfortunately, scientific community has not yet illuminated this specific area of his work, and with this paper author wants to point out the most important achievements of Laza Kostic in the field of legal science. When he was only 25 he obtained degree of doctor of law, after writing and successfully defending his thesis in Latin at the Royal University of Pest in 1866. In his late years, he began translating one of the most important textbooks of Roman Law, written by famous German Romanist Heinrich Dernburg (1829-1907). This masterpiece in three volumes (Pandekten, 1884-87) represented the fundamental work of the modern European legal culture. Laza Kostic received the order for this venture from the local Croatian-Slavonian-Dalmatian government in Zagreb (Zemaljska vlada). The first volume of his translation was published in Zagreb in 1900, the second remained as the manuscript, and it is not known whether Kostic finally ended this job. The text available to us shows how inventively Kostić was trying to create a new legal terminology, grounded on the vernacular language, taking dominant ideas of the historical law school and the subsequent learning of the famous jurist Valtazar Bogišić.

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