Several Types of Punishment According to Georgian Customary Law (on the Example of Upper Adjara)

Abstract

Georgian Customary law embraces many types of punishments. Among them the suffering and corporal punishments are commonly known, such as cutting, cursing, stoning, public humiliation , property or compositional punishments and etc. These are forms of punishment, which were widespread in almost all part of Georgia. Some of them were characteristic for separate region, for example, cutting was characteristic for Georgian law in Pshavi. It is undoubtedly proved with historic and ethnographic materials that in Adjara, as an administrative unit of Upper Kartli, punishments of Georgian customary law were used against to criminals. Especially before the period of Ottoman occupation, however, the norms of Georgian customary law used to continue existance even after the occupation in Adjara, but locally and under an influence of Islam. Finally, as a result of implemented law policy by the Russian governance customary law was completely exiled from active life and only occasionally was used in the public relations, mostly when an foreign law was incompatible with Georgian character or it was inaccessible for a lower social classes.