History of legal education in Serbia

At the same time when John of England released the famous Magna Carta Libertatum in Latin, in Serbia St. Sava has prepared and published in his native language a collection of both church and secular regulations under the name Nomocanon (Serbian: Zakonopravilo).

However, only liberation from the Turkish authorities, starting in the 19th century, enabled the full bloom of Serbian legal science and education.

At some stage in the struggle for national liberation from the Turks during the First Serbian Uprising that started in 1804, the Belgrade Higher School was founded in 1808.

During the period between the two world wars, the law school experienced its full bloom, it grew out into a modern European institution for legal education and has acquired a high international reputation.

The newly constructed law school building was damaged during the April bombing of Belgrade in 1941 and all lectures and activities were suspended.

In November 1941, seven teachers were imprisoned in a camp, because of their liberal attitudes and antifascist views, and two foremost Serbian authorities in legal education, Djordje Tasić and Mihajlo Ilic, were executed in 1944.

The building was renewed shortly after the Second World War, but the dramatic changes engendered by the Communist rule and the decades of legal, social and political experiments have left various consequences.

Immediately after the war, and later due to the ideological and political dissent, the Faculty of Law lost a number of its professors and assistants.

Notably, after the well-known discourse on the constitutional amendments of 1971, the state proceeded with the criminal prosecution and imprisonment of renowned Professor Mihailo Djurić.