The acts were proclaimed by Emperor Franz Joseph on 21 December 1867 and functioned as the supreme law of the land until the collapse of the empire in 1918.
It also guaranteed the right of the people to participate in the administration of criminal justice; serious crimes would from now on require trial by jury.
Last but not least, the Law established a system administrative courts, making executive acts of government subject to judicial review.
[6] The remaining laws dealt mainly with procedural details and miscellanea such as the immunity of Imperial Council delegates.
Until 1848, the Austrian Empire was an absolute monarchy with no written constitution and no modern concept of the rule of law.
The Pillersdorf Constitution, written essentially by the cabinet with no consultation of any kind of elected council, was widely seen as inadequate and did nothing to stem the tide of revolutionary unrest.
Hungary had come close to independence during the 1848 revolutions, had been beaten into submission only with the help of the Russian Empire, and had lived under what effectively was a military dictatorship ever since.
In 1866, Austria was defeated in the Austro-Prussian War and lost its claim to being the leading German state, plunging the Habsburg dynasty and their German-speaking realms into an unprecedented identity crisis.
His back to the wall, Franz Joseph saw no choice but grant Hungary all but full independence in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.
Both the Kingdom of Hungary and the Slavic provinces of Cisleithania broke away from the German-speaking core lands to form modern nation states.
On 21 October 1918, parliamentarians from the German-speaking regions convened to form a Provisional National Assembly (Provisorische Nationalversammlung) to manage this transition.