This edited volume focuses on the development of nineteenth and twentieth century legal institutional frameworks and legal practices in select Balkan countries. It takes the reader on a journey of exploration of similarities and differences that Balkan countries endured as they fought against but also were influenced by the legacies of the major colonial powers and their respective legal characteristics. It is divided into three main sections, each devoted to a specific country and focusing on one or more niches of that country's legal history. The volume incorporates academic texts written in both English and German, and renders readers’ employment of both languages essential for full immersion into the legal contexts presented.

The foreword by Thomas Simon sets the stage for the discussion of underlying themes of this volume followed by the author's exploration of nineteenth-century legal changes in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, respectively. He argues that diverging legal shifts could be observed in the two cases where Serbia's “westernization” took place in the “Prozess der Nationsbildung” (10) and, along with it, the rejection of the centuries-long oppression of the Ottomans. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the other hand, “Die Bosniaken versuchten … das endgültige Finale der osmanischen Herrschaft mit allen Mittel aufzuhalten,” (32) signaling that they were not ready to outright discard remnants of Ottoman empire's legal characteristics at the onset of Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The academic texts on Bosnia and Herzegovina underpin this overall assumption with more detail-oriented accounts of specific laws and regulations after the demise of the Ottoman empire. Each essay focuses on specific legal aspects that were subjected to transformation forces at various times, be it the protracted application of Ottoman laws in post-Ottoman eras and under changing political circumstances, agrarian matters, or matters within the realm of private law.

The second section transitions to Serbia where eight chapters also provide an in-depth account of Serbia's legal history. The emergence and crystallization of the concept of human rights, the significance of constitutional organization in Serbia and the Acts that were perceived to have planted the seeds of Serbian Constitutionality, the development of criminal trials that took place in different phases alongside key political developments, the development of criminal law and related criminal penalties, the development of Serbian Civil Code, and the Serbian Criminal Code are among subjects of exploration in the second section of the book. The section ends with the analysis of one of the key challenges in Serbia's nineteenth century history, namely “the establishment of a standard language and orthography” (515) after the demise of the Ottoman empire, which encompassed obstacles involving the creation of legal studies and proper legal terminology. The third section shifts the focus, once again, onto the Principality of Montenegro, where the sources of Valtazar Bogišić’s legal doctrines and his take on the relationship between customary law and civil law are explored. The section concludes with an exploration of Albania's constitutional developments.

The strengths of this edited volume lie in the detailed exploration of the legal contexts that characterized the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Balkan region. The volume adds to the literature on international legal studies and developments, and sheds light on a region that has received less scholarly attention in that realm than it deserves. The discussion of colonial powers’ influences on the legal frameworks of the select set of countries and the legacies that lingered even after their official demise created an underlying thread that binds the majority of these academic texts, albeit from different perspectives and under different political circumstances.

While this edited volume has a solid structure, the coherence and connectedness of the different texts could have been strengthened with a more focused set of topics and time periods that span different geographic contexts. A closer look at the texts and (albeit not undermining the value of this study in any way) the usage of different terms such as Bosnian Muslims (151), Bosniaks (47), and Bosniak Muslims (179) might present slight confusions for readers not familiar with the Balkan region, and greater consistency in the usage of terms would have eliminated any doubts as to their reference. The volume also misses an opportunity to expose the reader more fully to the legal reforms and developments, or stagnations thereof, during the second half of the twentieth century, both encompassing the period of communist rule and the legal transformation after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. On a related note, the volume also does not have a concluding chapter, which could have provided the reader not only with a synthesis of the major lessons learned from the extensive research presented here, but also of how these lessons had shaped the course of legal studies in these countries for years to come. Lastly, the reading experience is certainly embellished with the inclusion of texts in both English and German, but this same language variance, appreciated here, might present challenges for finding a sizeable number of readers who possess knowledge of both languages equally and who equally wish to immerse themselves in texts presented in both languages. Despite these shortcomings, the edited volume is a valuable addition to the literature and might be of interest to scholars who are bilingual and interested in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century legal history of the Balkan region.