著者

伊藤 知義

出版者

中央ロー・ジャーナル編集委員会

雑誌

中央ロー・ジャーナル (ISSN:13496239)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.17, no.1, pp.3-27, 2020-06-30

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Croatia enacted a law on same-sex life partnership in 2014. It affords same-sex couples almost the same rights as those of married or extramarital heterosexual couples with the exception of the right of adoption. Croatia was part of the former Yugoslavia for about seven decades. Among the ex-constituent members, Slovenia and Croatia recognize same sex partnerships. Serbia,Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and (Northern) Macedonia do not. All of the six countries reject same sex marriage. This paper discusses the lawmaking process in Croatia and what makes the difference between these two groups. It gives particular attention to why Serbia and Croatia, which belonged to one state for such a long time, have take different paths. Four factors are possible causes: history, religion, international circumstances, and domestic politics. Pre-modern era Croatia belonged to the central European legal tradition as part of Hungary or Austria, that is—the Hapsburg monarchy. Serbia, on the other hand, was part of the Ottoman Empire. Those different experiences affected their reception of modern law. Croatia always identified with the Hapsburg monarchy—a part of the West. Serbia began efforts to catch up with the West in the beginning of the 19th century, when the Ottoman Empire retreated. The two nations are also different religiously. Croatians believe in the Catholic Church. Serbians are aligned with the Orthodox Church. Modernism arose out of Protestantism—a variation of Catholicism, the origin of which was the Western Roman Empire. The Orthodox Church, by contrast, traced its roots to the Byzantine Empire. So, it remained reluctant to embrance modernism. For Croatians, modernism is theirs. For Serbians, it is not. Since the collapse of Socialism, Serbia has been embroiled in conflict. It waged civil wars against Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Serbia’s actions were labeled “ethnic cleansing,” and the country faced economic sanctions by the West and bombing by NATO. Serbian people felt they had been excluded from Europe, though the country had continuously sought EU membership. It was and still is difficult for them to become completely westernized. Croatia, however, had already been accepted by the West, to which it returned. It enjoyed peacetime after the end of the civil war and had enough time and space to think about issues such as protection of LGBT human rights, as did, Hungary and Austria. These factors explain to some extent the divergent Croatian and Serbian attitudes toward legal recognition of same-sex partnerships.