Vilniaus magistrato teismas 1795-1813 m

LTStraipsnyje nagrinėjama Vilniaus magistrato teismo veikla 1795–1813 m. Aptariama teismo personalinė sudėtis, teisėjų darbo aplinka, teisminės ir administracinės praktikos, kurios yra aktualios ir suteikia galimybę geriau pažinti miestiečių luomo ūkines, finansines, visuomenines ir šeimyninio gyvenimo problemas bei jų santykius su kitų luomų ir sluoksnių miesto gyventojais. Raktiniai žodžiai: Vilnius, magistrato teismas, burmistrai, tarėjai, civilinės bylos.

ENAfter the Russian Empire annexed the larger part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the conditions of Vilnius self-governance was gradually changing. This involved the incorporation of the magistrate into the centralised and bureaucratised imperial system and the establishment of a municipal police force, which, although not subordinate to the city government, was financed from the taxes collected from the citizens. All this meant that the magistrate lost the autonomy of power and the ability of independent decisions regarding the affairs of the city, which fell within its competence, and of protection the interests of the urban residents. In 1808, the Vilnius Magistrate was reorganised by introducing a new municipal authority, the Duma, which was responsible for the administration of the city’s economic, financial, public space, and commercial activities. The magistrate retained some of the administrative functions, but its main sphere of activity was oriented towards judicial practices. As the city’s municipal authority, the Vilnius Magistrate’s Council (two burgomasters and four councillors) carried out two activities – administrative and handling of civil cases. Jurisdiction encompassed civil cases of the urban class concerning the valuation and sale of real property, the appointment of guardians for minor orphans and widows, and a wide range of litigation. After 1795, the Vilnius Magistrate’s Court continued to be guided by the Statute of Lithuania, the resolutions of the Seimas of the Republic of the Two Nations (especially in 1764), and the Magdeburg Law. For its part, the annual council of the Vilnius Magistrate had an executive function of managing the treasury and the real estate belonging to the city, administering merchants’ and guilds’ matters, maintenance of the city and the public spaces, and regulation of trade.The institution’s documentation usually uses the generic term ‘the magistrate’s court’, but occasionally, especially in the context of municipal elections, it is referred to as ‘the court of the burgomaster of the magistrate’s council’ or ‘the annual assembly of the magistrate’s court’ to emphasise that the magistrate’s council performs the function of an administrative court, alongside the court of the vogt’s benchers, which deals with the criminal cases of the townspeople. The members of the magistrate’s council were elected for a term of one year, and from 1804 for a term of three years, but electoral protocols show that the elected burgomasters and councillors were routinely re-elected for several terms. Between 1795 and 1813, eleven burgomasters and fifteen councillors were elected as judges of the magistrate’s court. These data show that almost all the burgomasters and most of the 24 councillors of the magistrate had acquired judicial skills. The longest serving was the burgomaster Motiejus Borkovskis, who remained in office for almost two terms. It should be noted that the councillors did not rise to the rank of the burgomaster, with the sole exception of Juozapas Klimaševskis, who rose from a bencher to the burgomaster within five years, thus becoming a member of the ruling elite. The judges had various levels of experience in civil cases and in the administrative matters of city management. The presiding burgomaster should be considered the chief judge, although all the judges present at the hearing signed the court decisions. The judges of the magistrate’s court saw their office as a public service and a sign of a superior status in a highly hierarchical estate society rather than a professional activity.The increase in the court’s workload due to the rise of the number of appeals from the urban class and other townspeople and of the time-consuming wide-ranging administrative activities forced the judges to concentrate on their daily routine work and to do it with a higher level of professionalism. It was for this reason that the judges sought to legalise fixed remuneration and initiated respective proposals. As the legal institution of the urban class, the magistrate’s court underwent new organisational changes, but the process of dealing with appeals still followed the usual procedures and the statutory basis. The work of the magistrate’s court covered a variety of functions, with various administrative activities in addition to handling court cases. Keywords: Vilnius, magistrate’s court, burgomasters, councillors, civil cases.

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