Pro Memorie - Volume 23, Issue 1, 2021

Abstract Zacharias Huber (1669-1732) evaluated in the revised Heedensdaegse Rechtsgeleertheyt arguments, hitherto unknown, which were brought forward in a case, pursued before the Court of Friesland and decided on December 14th 1718. The case dealt with the ownership of a box with gold, found on the beach of Schiermonnikoog in 1710 and which came from the ship De Witte Haas, shipwrecked off the coast in 16 Read More

Abstract In 1724, the prosecutor-general of the Grand Council of Malines, the supreme court of the Austrian Netherlands, opened a judicial investigation into the marquis of Westerlo, one of the highest aristocrats in the Low Countries. It was alleged that he had abused his power against a peasant from Herselt, one of the villages in the marquisate of Westerlo. The investigation ultimately led nowhere, but its records do re Read More

Abstract This contribution deals with the softening of sentences by the Assize Court of West Flanders in the Dutch period (1814-1830). It is successively examined how the judges in this Court made use of a number of provisions in the Code pénal of 1810 to pursue their own sentencing policy, secondly, how the same judges, by re-qualifying the facts that the public prosecutor had brought to them defendant, succeeded i Read More

Abstract The Belgian Constitution guaranteed political liberty, exemplified by the mandatory competence of the jury for judging political and press offences. However, the constitution did not literally mention quasi-delicts. In 1861, liberal statesman Charles Rogier was insulted by the ultramontanist Catholic newspaper Le Journal de Bruxelles. He sued the newspaper’s printer under tort law, and obtained a considerable Read More