159 tice. To settle the inconsistency, Wrede made a compromise: much like the German doctrine in the first half of the nineteenth century, he introduced free evaluation of evidence into his theory by way of circumstantial evidence, now considered capable of adding up to full proof. In his theoretical presentation, the rules of witness evidence, thus, seemingly continued to be respected, as the rules remained distinct for confession, witness evidence and indicia. The outer design of the legal theory of proof was left intact, although the numerous exceptions made to it had thwarted the fundamental internal logic of the Romancanon law of proof. Despite allowing full proof to be based even on circumstantial evidence alone, Wrede continued to employ the arithmetical categories of proof when interpreting the rules concerning confession and witness testimony. Why was this so? If Wrede was so influenced by the German theory, why did he not proceed to declare the legal rules of proof to have fallen into desuetude, forsaken by way of legal practice? I believe that the answer lies in the upsurging legalistic ideology of the late nineteenth century. To openly admit that a complete section of the lawwas not in fact observed by the country’s courts, and to approve of this, would have shed a suspicious light on the “legalists. Therefore, the edifice of the legal theory was kept intact and an all-encompassing critical approach rejected. The newborn positivist or “legalist” ideology weighed too heavily on the shoulders of the founders of Finnish procedural science for them to completely ignore a decisively significant portion of the country’s written law. It is understandable that these men, in the name of consistency, wanted to hold to the letter of the law while they simultaneously used it as a shield against the Russification pretentions of the czarist regime. After 1917 the political aspect of legalismdisappeared; as legal ideology, it remained. Conclusion In the first five decades of the 1800s, Finland’s criminal procedure stayed loyal to the version of the statutory theory of proof that had evolved in Sweden and Finland by then. The theory had not, thus, remained unchanged nor had it remained untouched by foreign influence. Concerning most questions, Galonius, the eminent Finnish jurist, faithfully restates the opinions of the contemporary European legal science. Despite his basic adherence to the continental Amongthe I'innish leg.il scholars of the late 1800s and the early 1900s, the country’s position within the Russian Empire led to a strong emphasis of positivist and legalist argumentation. On the Finnish legalist jurisprudence, see Klami 1977. In his study on the legal repression following the Civil War of 1918, Kekkonen (1991) has, however, criticized the prevailing conception of the Finnish legal tradition as particularly “legalist.” Insofar as the results of this study are concerned, the legalist ideology appears, indeed, as mainly a constitutional and political cover ideology.
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