327 Part I chapter 34 Concerning the appealing or carrying over of eases where it is appropriate for the plaintiffs to ask for the reversal of an incorrect decision (“O appelliatsiiakh ili perenose del gde chelobitchikam na nepravoe reshenie bit’ chelom nadlezhit”) § 11. When a case has been dealt with incorrectly in the primary court, one shall not appeal that decision in that same court even if other judges have been appointed, but rather one shall appeal these cases in the provincial courts, and those of the provincial courts in the court of appeals. § 12. If the matter is dealt with incorrectly in these courts, one shall appeal against the provincial courts in that college (i.c., court of appeals, author’s note) which is appropriate in that matter, and against the courts of appeals in the iustits-kollegiia. § 13. If a plaintiff considers that the college (i.c., the iustits-kollegiia, author’s note) has decided the case incorrectly, he shall appeal from that college to the Senate, and the Senate shall decide that case after all the colleagues have been assembled and an oath has been sworn before God. It is very significant that the preparatory drafts of the new code of law indicated the following as the source of these paragraphs: From the Swedish law of the land (shvedskoc zemskoe ulozhenie, Swedish landslagen), title 7, chapters 38, 39, and 41. From the district court {zemskii sud, häradsrätt) appeals are made to the provincial court {lagmanskii sud, lagmansrätt), and from the provincial court to the court of appeals {nadvornyi sud, hovrätt), and he who is not satisfied with the decision of the court of appeals obtains revision fromthe king himself together with the Senate. If one compares the Russian judicial system with the corresponding Swedish hierarchy, one notes one important difference—the Russian iustits-kollegiia. In Sweden there was no judicial instance between the courts of appeals and the fustitierevisionen. It was true, however, that the court of appeals at Stockholm, that is, the Svea Court of Appeals, had a special standing in relation to the other courts of appeals,**^ but it could not claim to have the standing of a special court, which was superior to the other courts of appeals. Moreover, we have seen above how the status of the Russian iustits-kollegiia changed during the drafting of the ukaz of December 19, 1718. It had been intended in the beginning that the college should be a direct counterpart to the court of appeals at Stockholm, but, apparently as a result of Pick’s informative memorandum, the iustitskollegiia was elevated to the status of a fourth judicial instance, superior to the courts of appeals. There is no doubt, however, that the Svea Court of Appeals served as the organizational model for the iustits-kollegiia, and as late as December 1724 an explanatory comment in a calculation of the budget needs of the Russian colleges would read as follows: “The iustits96 TsGADA, f. 342 delo 33 chast’ 3 1. 319v. Petrén, 44.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=