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6 the secular and papal central powers, neither can the final abolition of those rules in the nineteenth century be adequately handled without paying some attention to the hourgeoisment of the nineteenth-century society and the subsequent gradual levelling of the Ständestaat, and its replacement by other divisions. David Garland has described “penality” as a “social institution which, in its routine practices, somehow contrives to condense a whole web of social relations and cultural meanings,” such as ideologies of criminal law, society’s need for a labor force and the development of public sensitivities. All of these, and many others, are reflected in the institution of punishment, and none of them alone adequately explains the variations in the forms it assumes. “Penality runs like a connecting thread through all the layers of social structure, connecting the general with the particular and the centre with its boundaries. I believe that much the same can be said about the law of proof. The very forms the lawof proof assumes and the stages it passes through are not affected only by political factors or social changes, although these cannot be omitted from consideration. Epistemological changes, development of substantive law and the history of the legal profession all inflict their direct and indirect influence on the law of proof. It goes without saying that no one study can deal with all aspects of such a complex phenomenon; the concerns expressed above and developed further in this study are the threads that I have chosen especially worthy of picking out of the rich texture of history through which the student of legal proof must find his way. It is certainly not the whole story, nor is it intended to be. What this work tells is the story of the transformation that the Finnish nineteenth-century law of proof went through. As mentioned already, it is, however, a story that necessarily begins much before that century. Therefore, a brief account of the legal theory of proof and the system of ordeals that preceded it will be given in Chapter 1. Although this study focuses primarily on Finnish lawof proof, the international context of our law will be present all through the study. Strictly speaking, and especially before the nineteenth century, no Finnish or Swedish lawof proof existed; it is always in connection with the continental European law of proof that all legal solutions adopted here need to be viewed. This is not to say, however, that no national characteristics would be observed during the course of the study, the most evident of them being the lack of learned jurists, the late emergence of scientific law, and the corresponding lay domination of procedure. To provide sufficient continental European background for the observations concerning Finland, the development of French and German law of proof is treated in Chapters 2-4. After that, in Chapters 5 and 6, the reception 12 Garland 1990 pp. 284, 287.

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