In the second half of the 19^th century, the private law of the Baltic Sea provinces^*1 , which were a part of the Russian Empire, took an important turn — in 1864, the codification of Baltic private law^*2 entered into force in the Baltic Private Law Act (BES). Until then, different laws applied for the Baltic Sea provinces, which included in addition to medieval bylaws also chivalric and regional laws and the norms of Swedish, Russian, and Polish laws, with subsidiary application of Roman laws, and which generally can be called Baltic provincial law. Roman Law was recepted into the system to a greater extent from the 13^th century. In 18^th –19^th -century court practice, Roman Law was allegedly preferred to the local law even if local laws should have been applied as primary sources; a contemporarywork^*3 states (in translation): “Roman Law — to that extent it is glossed — is recepted in its entirety in Germany and also in Livonia and Estonia and is used everywhere where the norms of Roman Law did not derive from the special Roman government or where the principles of Roman Law are not in direct opposition to the principles of the provincial law”.^*4