204 How should the transformation described be interpreted? In the previous chapters, I have wished to show that fundamental changes in the law of proof tend to occur in connection with major social, political, and epistemological transformations. Typically, the birth of the legal theory of proof has been part of the creation of a centralized state power; the free evaluation of evidence, then, as will be argued later, seems to have been an instrument with which an effective, bureaucratized state has operated within the realm of the law of proof. Obviously, for the law of proof to go through such a remarkable change as it did in Finland around the middle of the nineteenth century, significant transformations must have taken place in Finnish society and Finnish law in general. What they were, and the fact that the lawof proof was indeed not the only thing to change at that time, will be returned to in the later chapters.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=