SPLIĆANIN DR. VJEKOSLAV ŠKARICA: AUTOR OSEBUJNOG POJMA POMORSKOG PRAVA „BRODAR“
DR. VJEKOSLAV ŠKARICA: NATIVE OF SPLIT AND THE AUTHOR OF AN IDIOSYNCRATIC TERM IN MARITIME LAW – BRODAR (Eng. SHIP’S OPERATOR)

Summary/Abstract: The early 20th century is an extremely important period for the development of seamanship, both globally and in the then Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Economically speaking, steamships were increasingly becoming the main sailing vessels for the transportation of cargo and passengers by sea. The booming maritime traffic consequently called for an international system of maritime legal norms that would be legally binding to all seafarers. The first international conventions were passed under the auspices of the International Maritime Committee (1910). The specific conditions of maritime traffic in the then Kingdom of Yugoslavia called for a special set of regulations in maritime law. In 1919, in Split, Dr. Vjekoslav Škarica selfpublished his Basics of Merchant Maritime Law for the Yugoslav State. Based on this work, Dr. Škarica became a member of the National Comittee for the drafting of merchant maritime law. It was generally expected that the Kingdom of Yugoslavia would get a modern set of regulations for maritime navigation and in that sense be ahead of even Italy and France, which regulated their maritime law to being within the existing trade laws (Code de commerce from 1807 and Codice di commercio del 1882). The reasons why the Yugoslav maritime law was never passed were the unstable pre-war times and the breakup of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The documentation researched for the writing of this paper (for example, the Stenographic Records from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia Senate sessions in 1937 and a book by Sušak-born lawyer Dr. Špehar, from 1939) reveals that Dr. Škarica was regarded as one of the top experts of the Yugoslav state in the domain of maritime law. In his book Dr. Škarica defines the term brodar as a specific one within the shipping industry. Its greatest value lies in the fact that it was adopted as such by our most renowned researchers and experts in seamanship, and as a result it continued to be in use even after WWII, and is still in use today. Brodar, or a ship’s operator, is the central figure in our system, as is evident in the legal documents of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the Maritime Domain Act within the General Administrative Procedure Act, 1959, and Maritime Law, 1977), as well as in the maritime laws passed in the independent state of Croatia (1994 and 2004). Research into these historical sources proves that Dr. Škarica is indeed the author of the idiosyncratic legal term brodar, which has been in use in our maritime literature for already a century, and is an actively used term in the shipping industry today. The work of Dr. Škarica as a top expert in maritime law is unfortunately not widely known. Croatia, and especially Dr. Škarica’s native city of Split, should pay greater honor to this man whose ideas were ahead of the times in which he lived and worked. In that sense his work represents part of the cultural heritage of Split.

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