Statutes of Lithuania

The Statutes of Lithuania, originally known as the Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, were a 16th-century codification of all the legislation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its successor, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Statutes consist of three legal codes (1529, 1566, and 1588), all written in Ruthenian, translated into Latin and later Polish. They formed the basis of the legal system of the Grand Duchy and were "the first full code of laws written in Europe since Roman Law" and "a major milestone inasmuch as it is the first attempt to codify significant East European legal trends". The Statutes evolved hand-in-hand with the Lithuanian expansion into Slavic lands, thus the main sources of the statutes were Ruthenian Laws, Baltic tribes had neither written culture nor systematic laws, while the Ruthenians published codified collections of law 5 centuries before the first statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Old Slavic customary law, as well as the nobility privileges in Poland, Magdeburg Rights, international treaties and royal charters and proclamations of the 12th to 14th centuries.

On 28 January 1588, Sigismund III Vasa had confirmed the Third Statute of Lithuania which stated that the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth is a federation of two countries – Poland and Lithuania where both countries have equal rights within it and separated the powers of the ruler, the Seimas, the executive and the courts (this for the first time in European history ensured the rule of law in the state, but Lithuania's citizens, who were subjects to the Statute, were only nobles). The Third Statute of Lithuania has outlived the statehood of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which in 1795 was annexed by Russian Empire after the Partitions of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and was abolished by the Russian tsarist authorities only on 7 July 1840.

The main purpose of the First Statute was to standardize and unify the law, under one legal code, ending the prominent regional particularism. The unified law was supposed to act as a tool for better political and economic integration of the different regions.

Although general land privileges (obshchezemskie privilei) of 1447, 1492 and 1506 provided certain legal norms, as a rule, they did not cover more specific types of problems, such as procedure, punishment and other finer points of law. At the diet held in 1514, the delegates made the first request for laws and rights written down in a comprehensive code. After further repeated requests for such a code, a general diet was convened in the spring of 1522 for the discussion of provisions to be included in the first statute.

The First Statute was drafted in 1522 and came into force in 1529 by the initiative of the Lithuanian Council of Lords. It has been proposed that the codification was initiated by Grand Chancellor of Lithuania Mikołaj Radziwiłł as a reworking and expansion of the Casimir Code. The First Statute consisted of 13 Chapters and was divided into 282 Articles. The first edition was redrafted and completed by his successor Albertas Goštautas, who assumed the position of the Grand Chancellor of Lithuania in 1522.^{[citation needed]}

The First Statute was hand-written and survived in several copies. The statutes of Lithuania were translated to Latin because of Latin's superior terminology and to avoid ambiguity. Augustinus Rotundus was the most active proponent of Latin usage in Lithuania.

The second statute came into effect in 1566 by the order of the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, Sigismund II Augustus, and was larger and more advanced. The Grand Duke did this because of pressure from the Lithuanian nobility, as the expansion of nobles' rights since the publication of the first statute had made it redundant. The second statute was prepared by a special commission, consisting of ten members, appointed by the Grand Duke and the Council of Lords.^{[citation needed]}

This Second Statute made the rights of Orthodox Christians and Catholics equal. It consisted of 14 Chapters and contained 367 Articles.