310 By 1615, however, the Svea Court of Appeals had already lost its position as a supreme court from which no decisions could be appealed. Following protests from the non-noble estates, whose opposition arose primarily from attempts to make the court of appeals a court for the privileged nobility, the statute on procedure of 1615 made it possible to appeal decisions of the court of appeals to the king himself {heneficium revisionis).-^ This institution for seeking a revision of the decisions of the court of appeals gradually evolved into a regular legal procedure available to all parties in legal disputes.-'^ The founding of additional courts of appeals during the 1620s and 1630s at Åbo (present day Turku), Dorpat (present day Tartu), and Jonköping further altered the position of the Svea Court of Appeals, since it thereby came to share its judicial functions with other courts having the same legal status. Nevertheless, the Svea Court of Appeals continued to be considered a body of higher rank than the other courts of appeals, that is, as a primus inter pares. The Form of Government of 1634 listed the Svea Court of Appeals as one of the five colleges of the realm and stated that, among the courts of appeals, “the first and foremost in rank and reputation is the court of appeals in Stockholm, where the steward of the realmpresides. The special position of the Svea Court of Appeals in relation to the other courts of appeals was underlined even further in the addition to the Form of Government of 1634 promulgated in 1660. Article five of that document stated that: the steward is responsible for the chief inspection of the judicial system in all localities, though in a manner so that each and every court of appeals and other court remains undisturbed in its normal course and trial procedures; only that the steward, when it is necessary, counsels, forwards, and promotes all of them, and where he sees that uniformity can be observed in all the courts of appeals. Thus, the Svea Court of Appeals was to see to it that the administration of justice was uniform throughout the Swedish realm. During the seven- ” 28 of Appeals, see Stic Jägerskiöld, “Hovrätten under den karolinska tiden och till 1734 års lag (1654—1734),"’ in Sture Petrén ct al., Svea hovrätt. Studier till 35Qårsminnet (Stockholm, 1964), 226—238; Jan Eric Almquist, Svensk rättshistoria I. Processrättens historia (3rd ed., Stockholm, 1971), 18. For the discussion concerning the highest court of appeals, see Nils Runeby, Monarchia mixta. Maktfördelningsdebatt i Sverige under den tidigare stormaktstiden (Uppsala, 1962), 89—94. Regarding the origins of the ordinance on trials of 1614 and the statute on procedure of 1615, see too, Göran Rystad, Johan Gyllenstierna, rådet och kungamakten. Studier i Sveriges inre politik 1660—1680 (Lund, 1955), 244—246. -■ Petrén, 25. SRF, 7—8. Ibid., 47—48. 26 29
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