The legal system of the Republic of Slovenia has been largely formed during the period of the so-called transition. In the specific context of Slovenia, transition is used to describe a set of processes pertaining to the reintroduction of capitalism and secession from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. During that period, the judiciary had never been abolished but continued to perform typical judicial functions and could therefore influence certain transitional processes.
One of the crucial differences between the legal system of the ex-SFRY and that of The Republic of Slovenia is the conception of property. The prevailing mode of property relations was social ownership, which is not just a special form of a property right but presupposes a specific economic system. During the transition period the social ownership was gradually abolished. To a certain extent this had happened already due to the property laws reform in SFRY, but it was finalized by Slovenia's own privatization legislation.
One of the first challenges the judiciary in the independent Slovenia faced were cases pertaining to the audit of damages to socially-owned property, a special legal institute which was ushered in because of the changed behaviour of economic subjects after the property reforms in the late 1980s. The judiciary had influenced the process of the transformation of property relations by adjudicating on cases of the damages to socially-owned property. However, the court’s decisions were not formed in a vacuum, but were limited by legislation, socio-political circumstances, and other actors in the legal sphere.
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