Development of Commercial Law in the Slovak Republic - Outline of problems

The article concerns the issue of trade law in the context of its evolution and the current realities of its being in force in Republic of Slovakia. In the paper the authors present an historical view of the creation of legal regulations about trade from ancient times to present days. In the first part of the paper the political system and its components are discussed. The reader will be able to acquaint themselves with the functioning of the apparatus of executive power (the government and ministries), legislative power (the parliament consisting of 150 members) and judiciary (independent courts and prosecutors) in the Republic of Slovakia. Moreover, this part of the article provides information about practical aspects of the creation of selected components of the constitutional legal order (e.g. parliamentary elections). In the second part, the paper covers the evolution of trade law over the centuries, approaches to regulations in Mesopotamia, based on, inter alia, the Code of Hammurabi, and also in ancient Egypt and Greece. Tracing the development of trade law over the centuries, the authors also present the evolution of legal regulations in this field in the XIX century, with particular reference to France, Germany and Austria-Hungary (especially the territory which today forms the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic). In the last part of the article, the forming of regulations of trade law in Czechoslovakia from 1918 and during subsequent periods which created the history of that country, to the overthrow communism and the peaceful division of the state in 1993 into two separate, independent state organisms – the Czech Republic and Slovakia - is approached.