Latin Terms in Estonian Legal Journalism in the Interwar Period: Practical Tools for a Young Legal Culture

Summary

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1. Introduction - 2. Research material - 3. Frequency of usage of Latin terms - 4. Terminological variety - 4.1 The most frequent terms - 4.2. Succession - 4.3. The Land Reform Act, real estate, and ownership relations - 5. Conclusions

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Latin Terms in Estonian Legal Journalism in the Interwar Period: Practical Tools for a Young Legal Culture

1. Introduction

The time between the two World Wars is of special significance in the history of Estonia: for the first time, the country enjoyed sovereignty, and a parliamentary democracy was established. 2 Developing a legal order for our own state and drafting new legislation became undoubtedly one of the priorities in the Republic of Estonia, which was born in 1918. Until the adoption of the new laws, the old ones remained in force, having been imposed in the Estonian and Livonian provinces during the tsarist regime (for example, the Baltic Private Law Act 3 with its special legislation such as town law, land law, statutes for peasants, and special regulations regarding the clergy), creating an obvious lack of uniformity from the point of view of the legal system. 4 Regrettably, drafting of legislation is a remarkably time-consuming process, and in the few years of independence this process was not completed in some areas of law. Also, the Baltic Private Law Act, on which the new Civil Code was based, and which relied heavily on Roman law and contained a great number of Latin terms, remained in force until the Soviet occupation in 1940. Albeit outdated in essence, the Civil Code formed one of the central elements in the juridical discourse.

At the outset of self-determination, great importance was attached to the Estonian language, which began to be used for legal studies, legislation, and practice of law in general. Consequently, in the interwar period, the Estonian legal language and the corresponding terminology developed, ousting the Russian and German languages, which had previously been used for legal purposes. 5

The concept of the relationship between language and nationality in modern society and the idea that each nation is unique, and that in order for a nation to survive, its language and culture must be preserved, stems from the 18th-century German Sturm und Drang movement and echoes the ideas of the French Enlightenment. 6 This national and linguistic ideology was embraced by 19th-century thinkers and sociologists who attempted to find an explanation for the national and linguistic conflicts in the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Turkish empires and therefore readily accepted the German national-linguistic model. Furthermore, this model proposed political rights and democracy through nat...

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