Uses of civil justice and social policy

Wider research context/ theoretical framework: The project analyzes the making and social effect of the Austrian code of civil procedure (ZPO, 1895/98) and its adaptation in Hungary (1911/15), regarded in historical literature as the foundation of social civil proceeding. Yet the empirical evidence of persistently high litigation rates in some crownlands after adopting the ZPO raised the hypothesis of regionally specific legal behavior. The research is relevant for the understanding of social integration in the late Habsburg Monarchy, of the relations between capitalist economy and civil justice, for enriching knowledge on societal determinants of litigation and for exploring regions with distinct legal traditions. Hypotheses/research questions/objectives: The project asks about the ways and the extent to which the Trans- and Cisleithanian legal administrations created a socially protective civil jurisdiction. Did access to civ il justice become a social right? How was the new civil procedural law used in various parts of the Monarchy? Approach/methods: The project has a double focus and combines sociological analysis with methods of comparative intellectual, social and political history. Module 1 is a qualitative study of the preparation of the Austrian and Hungarian ZPOs by conceptualizing them as a policy field. It inquires into the making of the law with a focus on the interaction of actors with diverging interests and deploying various (statistical, legal and sociological) resources of knowledge. The aim is to offer a contextualized historical assessment of the scientific and welfare character of the procedural reforms. Module 2 explores the quantitative macro-social, economic and demographic factors conducive to regional varieties in the social use of the instruments created by the civil procedural law during the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Which variables can explain the diverse and persisting patterns of legal mobilization after the procedural reforms? The module uses the Monarchys astonishingly rich yet hitherto hardly explored civil justice statistics as data sources and combine them with other statistics on social structures of the time. Level of originality/innovation: The project is a first-time inquiry into the social and institutional dimensions of the Austrian and Hungarian procedural reforms, in regard to the emerging social citizenship in the Habsburg Monarchy: it casts the procedural reforms as a policy field, where decision-making involved new knowledge resources beyond legal norms, such as legal statistics. The exploration of the mobilization of civil courts, litigation behavior and societal correlates of civil litigation rates by multivariate techniques of data analysis is also innovative, closing historical and socio-legal research gaps. Primary Researchers involved: Dr. Borbala Zsuzsanna Török (University of Vienna - Applicant/PI, Module 1); N.N. (University of Vienna, Module 2).

Wider research context/ theoretical framework: The project analyzes the making and social effect of the Austrian code of civil procedure (ZPO, 1895/98) and its adaptation in Hungary (1911/15), regarded in historical literature as the foundation of social civil proceeding. Yet the empirical evidence of persistently high litigation rates in some crownlands after adopting the ZPO raised the hypothesis of regionally specific legal behavior. The research is relevant for the understanding of social integration in the late Habsburg Monarchy, of the relations between capitalist economy and civil justice, for enriching knowledge on societal determinants of litigation and for exploring regions with distinct legal traditions. Hypotheses/research questions/objectives: The project asks about the ways and the extent to which the Trans- and Cisleithanian legal administrations created a socially protective civil jurisdiction. Did access to civil justice become a social right? How was the new civil procedural law used in various parts of the Monarchy? Approach/methods: The project has a double focus and combines sociological analysis with methods of comparative intellectual, social and political history. Module 1 is a qualitative study of the preparation of the Austrian and Hungarian ZPOs by conceptualizing them as a policy field. It inquires into the making of the law with a focus on the interaction of actors with diverging interests and deploying various (statistical, legal and sociological) resources of knowledge. The aim is to offer a contextualized historical assessment of the scientific and welfare character of the procedural reforms. Module 2 explores the quantitative macro-social, economic and demographic factors conducive to regional varieties in the social use of the instruments created by the civil procedural law during the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Which variables can explain the diverse and persisting patterns of legal mobilization after the procedural reforms? The module uses the Monarchy's astonishingly rich yet hitherto hardly explored civil justice statistics as data sources and combine them with other statistics on social structures of the time. Level of originality/innovation: The project is a first-time inquiry into the social and institutional dimensions of the Austrian and Hungarian procedural reforms, in regard to the emerging social citizenship in the Habsburg Monarchy: it casts the procedural reforms as a policy field, where decision-making involved new knowledge resources beyond legal norms, such as legal statistics. The exploration of the mobilization of civil courts, litigation behavior and societal correlates of civil litigation rates by multivariate techniques of data analysis is also innovative, closing historical and socio-legal research gaps.