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Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

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11–20 of 222 posts

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#11
Note that in a common law system, this would be thrown out of court under either "acquiescence" (if you don't raise a fuss for a very long time when someone unknowingly infringes your rights, you can lose those rights), or "laches" (if you wait long enough to make a legal claim that the defendant is injured by e.g. having made economic decisions in ignorance of that claim).

Not sure about the equivalent Italian law, but I would be deeply surprised if there isn't something similar.

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#12

and this belongs here because...?

Note the submission guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#14

and this belongs here because...?

Because the person who posted it thought someone else on Hacker News might be interested.

That's pretty much the only reason one needs.

I was interested enough to read the article and you were interested enough,albeit in a negative sense, to add your comment; so it seems they were right.

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#15
post #13

A similar feudal tax was still levied in part of the Netherlands until 2014. [0] [0] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dertiende_penning

Per that article, in some places the tax had already been abolished simply by not having been levied for a long time.

I would hope something similar would apply in Italy too.

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#16
post #2

Maybe they should apply to the king of Italy for relief, since it is from his divine right to all the land that the fief is granted to his vassals.

I'm not sure that's true, the monarchy in Italy was relatively modern and short lived, preceded by a patchwork of republics with wonderful election systems.

Here's an example of how the elections for Doxe de Venezia worked in the Republic of Venice[0]:

> Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine, and the nine elected forty-five. These forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who elected the doge. Election required at least twenty-five votes out of forty-one, nine votes out of eleven or twelve, or seven votes out of nine electors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#17
post #5

In the UK, during the purchase of our house we had to take a "chancel liability insurance", because our freehold once belonced to a rectory, so to protect ourselves from repair liability towards a chapel that has been here for centuries, we had to pay a one-off insurance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability Leftover laws are weird things. EDIT: PS: sadly, the legendary, obligatory archery practice…

Yeah, in a town near the one I grew up in, there's a street called 'Butt Hole Lane'. That made me laugh a lot when I was younger, even when my parents explained to me what the 'Butt' in this context meant.

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#18
post #7

Now wondering which European countries still have intact feudal law. Scotland abolished feudal tenure in 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_Feudal_Tenure_etc... ; most of the feu burdens were abolished or explicitly ported across. England&Wales still retains the feudal system in places and occasionally people are hit by "chancel repair liability" or somesuch. The chivalric court still exists: https://en…

There are some vestiges of "udal" land law that are still valid in the Shetland and Orkney Islands. This comes down from Norse law (the Norse controlled those islands for long periods of time). A major difference is that under the law in the rest of the UK a coastal landowner only owns the land down to the high tide line, while under udal law the landowner owns the land down to the low tide line. This obviously has implications for docks, pipelines, cables, etc.

Also, in some of the Channel Islands, Queen Elizabeth isn't technically the Queen, but rather the Duke of Normandy (despite being female, she's called the "Duke", or "The Queen, our Duke").

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#19
post #7

Now wondering which European countries still have intact feudal law. Scotland abolished feudal tenure in 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_Feudal_Tenure_etc... ; most of the feu burdens were abolished or explicitly ported across. England&Wales still retains the feudal system in places and occasionally people are hit by "chancel repair liability" or somesuch. The chivalric court still exists: https://en…

I suspect that none of the European countries to the eastern side of the Iron Curtain retained feudal law, or much of the "legacy" law in general. That, I guess, is one of the few potential upsides of any revolution: an opportunity arises to just throw away a lot of pre-existing arrangements and re-draw them anew in (hopefully) more sensible way. Of course, the quality of the new design and/or its implementation is not guaranteed, results may vary.

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#20
post #7

Now wondering which European countries still have intact feudal law. Scotland abolished feudal tenure in 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_Feudal_Tenure_etc... ; most of the feu burdens were abolished or explicitly ported across. England&Wales still retains the feudal system in places and occasionally people are hit by "chancel repair liability" or somesuch. The chivalric court still exists: https://en…

There are some vestiges of "udal" land law that are still valid in the Shetland and Orkney Islands. This comes down from Norse law (the Norse controlled those islands for long periods of time). A major difference is that under the law in the rest of the UK a coastal landowner only owns the land down to the high tide line, while under udal law the landowner owns the land down to the low tide line. This obviously has i…

Also, while swans are the property of the Crown in most of the United Kingdom, they are the property of the people in the Orkney Islands according to Udal Law [0]:

> Today, the Queen still has ownership of all swans in the UK except in one small corner of the British Isles - the Orkney Isles.

> Under Udal Law, the ancient Norse system of inheritance and law, which the Viking settlers brought to Orkney, the swan is the property of the people, rather than the Crown.

> The case was proven in 1910 by a Kirkwall lawyer who, accompanied by his friend, the Procurator-Fiscal, went out to Harray Loch and shot a swan. The case went to the High Court and the Crown lost.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160725172726/http://www.scotsm...

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