155 were affected by its people’s way of living, which in turn depended on various other factors, such as climated^ Clearly, Snellman was in favor of a legal codification. He thought that all the nation’s laws ought to be collected into a lawbook, instead of remaining “a disorderly mass of spread-out statutes,” and that lawought to be administered in public. For Snellman, the independence of the judiciary was of utmost importance: the judge was to be wholly independent as far as appointment procedures and his personal security went.^i In both civil and criminal cases, it was, for Snellman, the question of fact and not law that presented the greatest possibilities for a judge’s mistakes. Therefore and in order to correct wrongful decisions, it was necessary to have several judicial instances. For the same reason, Snellman remains loyal to the statutory theory of proof. The judge ought not to base his verdict on probabilities, but on clear proof. But why have two witnesses, why not demand only one, or three? This is because of a “rational calculation” klokhetsberäkning”), comparable to the fact that there is a determined number of instances.5No more than Ehrström later did Snellman accept the thoughts of Hegel without criticism. Whereas Hegel was in favor of the jury, Snellman seems cautious as to the political implications of the institution. In comparison to professional judges, jurymen are more vulnerable to political pressure. “The most difficult obstacle is, however, the juryman’s legal irresponsibility that leaves his opinion a prey of the day’s judgement.”-'’^ In his discussion on the jury, Snellman follows by the foreign debate in which free evaluation of evidence is linked to the jury; the possibility of a professional judge, unbound by legal rules of proof, is not considered here. Snellman’s analysis turns out slightly to favor a professional judiciary, although both laymen and trained judges have their defects. In the jury system, it is up to the prosecutor to define {rubricera) the crime. This is a risk, just like the jurymen’s subjectiveness. In the professional system, the risk lies in the fact that conviction depends on the legal proof which might not be at hand. The professional judge’s decision can, however, be overruled by a higher instance; the jury’s cannot. Procedural lawas its own branch of legal science was first introduced in Finland by Rabbe Axel Wrede in the 1890s. By then, the legal theory of proof had been abandoned for decades by German legal scholars, who where Wrede’s main source of inspiration.’-'’ Insofar as criminal procedure was concerned, Finnish legal practice had, as I have shown above, since the 1850s and 1860s •*9 Ibui. p. 739. Ibid, pp, 760-761. Ibid. p. 762. Ibid. pp. 766—767. ” Ibid. pp. 788-789. Ibid. p. 790. 55 Wrede (1851—1938) was a student and personal friend of Adolf Wach, Klami 1977 p. 169.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=