150 Once a professor, Ehrströmwas heavily drawn into law-drafting^^ and published no more works on criminal procedure. As professor of criminal law, he was responsible for teaching criminal procedure as well. Ehrstrom’s unpublished lectures^' do, indeed, reveal that the professor’s views had changed considerably in the ten years that had passed since the publication of his licentiate thesis “Omföreträdet.” In his lectures of 1866, Ehrströmspeaks favorably of the jury. The professor explains that the use of trial juries presupposes a division of questions of fact and law. As for the latter, the only way to avoid a written procedure is to have a sufficient number of experienced judges; insofar as juries are concerned, an excessive dependence of the judiciary on the power holders can be avoided only through them. A further advantage that the jury has is that its members are more likely than the judges to know the parties. Juries represent the people, whereas a professional judge is only the “the other side of the legislative power. Regarding procedural principles, Ehrström’s views remained unaltered. He continued to denounce fervently the faults of the criminal procedure in force, and spoke to the students in favor of the adversarial procedure and the publicity principle. As for the first one, the lecturer repeated the arguments put forth in “Omföreträdet”; as to the second principle, it was necessary because judicial decisions had to be subjected to the criticismof the “general opinion. After explaining the contemporary system of legal proof, the lecture turns into an outright attack against the system. Ehrström says that the law’s demand for two witnesses is troublesome (vansklig) and the rules in general indefensible, since they are conducive to false decisions. In many countries, Ehrströmcontinues, statutory rules of proof have been abandoned. The rules imply a mistrust of the judiciary; the court system ought, therefore, to be reformed and juries established. That such reforms have been carried through in several countries is, to the professor, “fully rational.” Ehrströmprovides an example. There is a lawthat Titus must be punished when he has committed a crime. In other words, people have decided that Titus must be punished for his crime so-and-so, but they cannot decide beforehand when the crime must be considered to have been committed. If the people cannot, then, decide the matter (the question of fact) in plena, two basic alternatives reEhrströmwas a significant member of the law-drafting committee that submitted its proposal in 1875. Another committee - of which Jaakko Forsman, Ehrström’s successor as university professor, was the central member — was then encharged of revising the 1875 proposal. The work of the latter committee led to the promulgation of the new Criminal Code in 1889. See Kivivuori 1969 pp. 179-183; Lahti 1977 pp. 4-9; and Lappi-Seppälä 1982 pp. 130-132. The manuscripts (Ehrström 1866 and 1867) are kept in the collection of Helsinki University Library. Ehrström 1866 pp. 11-12. Ehrström 1867 pp. 20-21, 144.
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