7 of legal proof in Sweden will be dealt with. Hopefully, these chapters will help the reader to forman understanding of the different sc)cial, political and philosophical prerequisites that helped keep the theory of legal rules more or less intact until the nineteenth century. In Chapters 7-11, the doctrinal (and partly statutory) breakthrough of free evaluation of evidence in Germany, France, Sweden and Finland is observed. The comparison will, I hope, furnish the reader with an idea of the different contexts under which the legal theory of proof was finally abolished. As will be shown, free evaluation of evidence stands in close relationship to the widening of lay participation in criminal procedure through the institution of the jury. There were, however, other aspects involved, most notably the rt:>le of substantive criminal law and the legal profession in the bureaucratic state. Chapters 12 and 13 focus on the transformation of Finnish law of proof. Given the scarcity of Finnish legal discussion in the nineteenth century, the change has been impossible to follow without case material. Although it is common knowledge among Finnish historians of law that the legal rules of proof were abandoned by the legal practice already before the statutory change in 1948, there have been c^nly vague conceptions as to when the change occurred. By way of empirical study, I will show that the change was a gradual one, but that the crucial years were the decades of the 1850s and 1860s. In addition to the timing of the change, I will attempt to clarify what juridicaltechnical patterns it followed. The bulk of the case material consists of the cases of theJudicial Department of the Senate (fromnow on: the JDS), Finland’s highest court instance during the Autonomy (1809-1917). Timewise, the study begins in 1820 and covers for every fifth year all the homicide cases that reached theJDS. There are two reasons for the starting point. First, it is important to understand the Finnish legal theory of proof at the time before it began to change. An even later year would have filled this criterion, but I wanted to begin at some year before the factual abolition of capital punishment in Finland in 1826. To begin before Finland’s annexation to Russia in 1809 would have been, then, not only excessive from the point of viewof the desire to establish the Finnish legal theory of proof before its disappearance, but would also have changed the whole context of the empirical part to an unnecessary extent. Because by 1900 all the essential elements of free evaluation of evidence had already fallen into place, I have chosen the turn of the twentieth century as the logical place to end the empirical survey. The studv concentrates on homicidal crimes. Again, there are several reasons for the solution. First and foremost, it is well-recognized fact that legal rules of proof emerged in connection to serious criminality.'-^ Second, as court I-'iorelli 1953 I pp. 243-246; L.ingbcin 1976 pp. 48-49.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=