Status Civitatis' in the Romanian Sibiu Assembly of 1864

• Author: Cristinel - Ioan Murzea
• Position: Law Faculty, Law Department, 'Transilvania' University of Brasov, Brasov, Romania
• Pages: 129-132

AGORA International Journal of Juridical Sciences, www .juridicaljournal.univagora.ro

ISSN 1843-570X, E-ISSN 2067-7677

No. 4 (2014), pp. 129-132

129

“STATUS CIVITATIS”

IN THE ROMANIAN SIBIU ASSEMBLY OF 1864

C.I. Murzea

Cristinel - Ioan Murzea

Law Faculty, Law Department,

“Transilvania” University of Braov, Braov, Romania

*Correspondence: Cristinel-Ioan Murzea, Transilvania University of Braov

25 Eroilor Blvd, Brasov, Romania, 500036

E-mail: cristinel.murzea@unitbvs.ro

Abstract:

Status civitatis configured by the laws of the first Romanian Assembly held in Sibiu

between 1863 and 1864 reflects a change of essence of the constitutional regime of

Transylvania, by enacting, for the very first time in Romania, a principle of liberal democracy,

that of representing the citizen in the chosen institutions of the state.

Keywords: constitutional regime, fundamental right, doctrine, system, democracy

Starting from the antique Aristotle ’s’ axiom according to which “man is by nature a

social individual and if one individual can’t or doesn’t want to accommodate himself in

society because he is self sufficient, than he is either not a member of the state or a god”

1

.

The Assembly, which worked in Sibiu according to the emperor’s edict passed by the

king of Austria, was based on the principle of proportional representation, a fact which

enlightened a fundamental right of the citizen, namely that of choosing and of being chosen;

the only problem is that this principle was mystified in practice, according to the statistical

data which showed that the 44 Hungarian representative were representing a population of

568172 inhabitants, thus one person represented 12973 inhabitants; the 33 elected Saxon

representatives had a number of 10441 inhabitants, thus one person was representing 6370

people; the 48 Romanian elected representatives had a number of 1309913 inhabitants,

meaning 1 representative for each 26280 people

2

.

Given all these, there was a sensible mutation in regard to the nature of constitutional

law in Transylvania, as it passed from the basic historic law “to national law” thus

transforming the people in a nation, where the citizen was the supreme value of society.

Romanian judicial doctrine states, for the very first time, the idea according to which

citizenship is a bilateral contract in which there are rights and obligations for both parties, as

the parties are in a relative state of equilibrium. George Bariiu stated, around the time the

Sibiu Assembly works, that “Our language and nat ionality is not ensured and, without

personal freedom, the freedom of speech, of the media, of the assemblies, without the security

of domicile, all our rights basically become a “fictio iuris”

3

.

Thus, what we may call a new right starts to appear in Romanian doctrine, the right “ to

be a citizen”, a right which, at least on a constitutional level, expresses another judicial

meaning excluded at those times by the doctrine of historic law.

From a legal point of view, another axiom appeared according to which “no one can be

arbitrarily deprived of his citizenship, an inherent right of the person, which refers to natural

right”. According to this opinion, citizenship is the fundamental right of a person, according to

which citizens can exercise all their rights in accordance with their own will.

1

Aristotel, Politics by El.Bezdechi, Bucharest, 1924, p. 17.

2

Cf. S. Retegan,The Romanian Transylvania Assembly, Daci a Publishing House, Cluj Napoca, 1979, p. 42.

3

Cf. C. Murzea, The reform of state and law in the modern ages, Sitech Publishing House, Craiova, 2013, p. 147.