House law

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House laws (German: Hausgesetze) are rules that govern a royal family or dynasty in matters of eligibility for succession to a throne, membership in a dynasty, exercise of a regency, or entitlement to dynastic rank, titles and styles. Prevalent in European monarchies during the nineteenth century, few countries have house laws any longer, so that they are, as a category of law, of more historical than current significance. If applied today, house laws are mostly upheld by members of royal and princely families as a matter of tradition.

Some dynasties have codified house laws, which then form a distinct section of the laws of the realm, e.g., Monaco, Japan, Liechtenstein and, formerly, most of Germany's principalities, as well as Austria and Russia. Other monarchies had few laws regulating royal life. In still others, whatever laws existed were not gathered in any particular section of the nation's laws. In Germany where many dynasties reigned as more or less independent sovereigns, laws governing dynastic rights constituted a distinct branch of jurisprudence called private princely law (Privatfürstenrecht).

The house laws of the German ruling families had a direct influence on Scandinavian kingdoms including Denmark and Sweden.^[1]