The Greek civil code of 1946: Preparation, influences and the unification of Greece’s four civil law regimes

Platsas, Antonios Emmanuel

Abstract

This contribution is about the preparation of Greece’s Civil Code, which was completed in 1940 and came into effect in 1946. This code governs the majority of civil law matters in Greece to date. One of the Greek Civil Code’s major achievements, which this contribution explores in detail, has been the fact that it unified the four Interwar civil law regimes of Greece into one. For legal and historical reasons, it took modern Greeks more than 100 years to unify their country in civil law matters, after the liberation of the country from Ottoman rule. Beyond this, the Greek Civil Code is one of the lesser-known examples of comparative legal research in the world. Yet, exemplary comparative legal research has been put into this project, which, by the time it came into life, was long overdue. From a comparative point of view, this is a civil code that amalgamates ideas from Eastern Roman law and German civil law with the addition of a number of ideas from other European laws. The powerful influence of Eastern Roman law and German law on the Greek Civil Code is explored herein. As such, special regard shall be had to two major legal sources to the Greek Civil Code: the German Pandectists and the Harmenopoulos’ Hexabiblos, an epitome of Eastern Roman Law that medieval but also most of the modern Greek lawyers would traditionally use for addressing their civil law matters up until 1946.

Citation

Platsas, A. E. (2023). The Greek civil code of 1946: Preparation, influences and the unification of Greece’s four civil law regimes. [Interwar Dialogue]

• Digital Artefact Type: Website Content
• Acceptance Date: Jul 7, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jul 7, 2023
• Publication Date: Jul 7, 2023
• Deposit Date: Oct 2, 2023
• Keywords: Greek Civil Code, Codification, Unification, Eastern Roman Law, German Law, Harmenopoulos, Hexabiblos, Civil Code of Crete, Samian Civil Code, Ionian Civil Code, Eleutherios Venizelos, Ioannis Metaxas, Konstantinos Tsaldaris, Pandectists, German Civil Cod
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11148239
• Publisher URL: https://wp.me/p80U0W-1t7