ABSTRACT
The chapter outlines historical trajectories and analyzes differences in the context of legal culture, following a historical periodization including: the period after the Congress of Berlin, the interwar period, and socialist and post-socialist periods, respectively. While modernization as Europeanization is an underlying theme, shaping a common destiny and, therefore, a common legal identity, the chapter also analyzes social and ideological transformations, most notably those occurring since the late XIX and early XX century, and during the socialist era until today. It focuses on legal formalism as a legacy of early modernization that was exacerbated during socialism and survived it, remaining one of the key traits of legal culture and, consequently, legal identity. Still, as legal identity is not only a descriptor or abstraction of the features that we recognize as legal culture, but a collective identity engaged in broader dynamics, the chapter concludes by critically addressing the EU-accession bound modernization as Europeanization and the role that legal identity plays in the process, in the Western Balkans.
