Language and Law in Multiethnic Societies: The Case of Transylvania
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Language and Law in Multiethnic Societies: The Case of Transylvania Emőd Veress1,2
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Transylvania is a multiethnic society that was part of the Hungarian legal space for centuries. Still, after the WWI, this territory became part of Romania, alongside with a significant number of Hungarian-speaking minority population. What happened with Hungarian as a legal language after the annexation of Transylvania to Romania? The article deals with the history and current status of Hungarian legal language in Romania, emphasizing the frequent contradictions between legal texts and realities, the importance of political context, and fluctuations in the minority rights. The focus is on two problems: the language of legal education and the language of the court proceedings. There are arguments brought to prove the conditionality between these two at the intersection of history of legal education and minority rights. Keywords Transylvania · Language of legal education · Language of court proceedings · Bolyai University · Sapientia University
1 Context At the end of the year 1918, de facto, and in 1920, de jure, according to the Trianon Peace Treaty, Transylvania, a historical region of East-Central Europe, became part of Romania. According to the census conducted in 1910, 53.8% of the Transylvanian population was Romanian, and 31.6% Hungarian. Transylvania, as a region, had a central role in Hungarian history and culture. Therefore the annexation of this territory was perceived as a significant loss by Hungarians. Meanwhile, the Romanians saw as a unification of the Romanian-speaking people and great political achievement. As an effect of the Trianon Peace Treaty concluded precisely 100 years ago,
* Emőd Veress [email protected] 1
Department of Private Law, Ferenc Mádl Institute of Comparative Law, Budapest, Hungary
2
Department of Law, Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Cluj‑Napoca, Romania
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E. Veress
Hungary lost one-third of its ethnic Hungarian population to other states where Hungarians formed a significant national minority. This loss is why the Trianon Peace Treaty is still seen in the historical literature as controversial, with just a partial ethnic justification, and its over-sanctioning nature is regularly reflected. The territorial profit also defines Romanian political thinking: it is perceived as a gain that must be protected, and the mere existence of national minorities permanently threatens this territorial gain. Therefore a two-faceted politics was born, targeting in one direction: on the one hand, the outward appearance of a minority-friendly policy was created, as it contributed preserving territorial gains; on the other hand, the minority was the internal enemy, whose emigration and assimilation is desirable, for the same purpose. This approach that the territorial gains can be loosed was confirmed by the Second Vienna Award (1940),1 which returned part of Transylvania, the so-called Northern Transylvania, to Hungary, while So
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