Abstrakt
During the existence of the Roman Empire many legal maxims were developed and articulated in roman legal sources. Some of them are surpassed, historically determined and can be hardly adopted in the nowadays social reality (e.g. principles regarding slaves).
Other Roman law maxims have survived for centuries, and are vivid and still actual and may be used even today. Many of them are expressly incorporated in modern civil codes, and not only of the Continental Europe.
The contribution focuses on certain Roman law principles which may be found in civil codes that have been in force on the territory of the contemporaneous Czech Republic in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. The ABGB (Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, the Austrian Civil Code), and Act No. 89/2012, Collection of Laws, the so-called New Civil Code are the most important statutes to be analysed.
The government proposal of the Civil Code of 1937 and Act No. 40/1964, Collection of Laws, the Civil Code, will be discussed, too. In the above-mentioned legislation, we can find provisions stating universally valid principles, such as Scire leges non est verba eorum tenere, sed vim ac potestatem (Cels.
D 1, 3, 17) or Iuris praecepta haec sunt: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere (Ulp. D 1, 1, 10, 1), or other very important Roman legal maxims laying foundations to individual parts of civil law, such as superficies solo cedit (Gai 2, 73), semel heres semper heres (Gai D 28, 5, 89), adoptio naturam imitatur (I 1, 11, 4) etc.
The paper deals with chosen Roman legal maxims and their reflection in Czech civil codes. This involves comparison of wording, meaning, importance and approach to each of the chosen maxims, both in Roman law and Czech law of the last three centuries.