8 records concerning homicides are, on an average, considerably more elaborated and the decisions better grounded than the ones dealing with other crimes, they tend to offer much more to the researcher. It is much easier to delve into the world of nineteenth-century evidential thinking through them than by using other material. In order to verify on the correctness of my conelusions drawn on the basis of homicidal material, and to see whether they have any general applicability, I have investigated lower court criminal cases (other than homicides) from the years 1830 and 1850. Why criminal cases? In Finland, the same courts decided both criminal and civil cases, so why not deal with both? At an early phase of the study, it became clear that the problems of criminal procedure differ to such a great extent from the ones concerning civil procedure that both branches of law could not be fitted into the same study. By the 1800s, the methods of proof employed in civil law had grown very different fromcriminal procedure. Whereas witness testimony and confession, the characteristics of the legal theory of proof, were undoubtedly central in criminal law, in civil law they had largely yielded to documental proof. Since the latter was, according to the Lawof 1734,'"^ evaluated freely, it would present tremendous methodological difficulties to draw definite conclusions as to the conceptions of the lawof proof and their change on the basis of civil law cases. For these reasons, I have preferred to limit the study to criminal procedure. In the final three Chapters of the book, the focus will be placed on Finland again. The aimof this part of the book is to attempt to find explanations for the way law of proof changed in Finland. I will discuss the links between crime and criminal law on one hand, and the law of proof on the other (Chapter 14); then I will take up the role of the emerging Finnish legal profession as an engine of change (Chapter 15). In Chapter 16, the change under investigation will be examined within the context of modern law. On the statutory level, free evaluation of evidence was first introduced at the turn of the twentieth century for certain kinds of civil cases,'-'’ and in the aftermath of the violent Civil War of 1918 the principle was included in the statute governing the legal treatment of the defeated Reds.'^ With the reform of the Chapter 17 of the PS in 1948, the principle of free evaluation of evidence was ’■* Procedural Section (fromnow on; PS) 17:1; “Företer nagor skrifteliga bevis, at sin talan ther med styreka; pröfve Domaren noga theras beskaffenhet och riktighet, så ock hvad vitsord och verkan the i saken äga”, or in English: “Should someone present written evidence to prove his case thereby, let the Judge carefully weigh their quality and correctness, and also what weight and effect they shall have in the case.” Statutes entailing the principle of free evaluation of evidence were the Railroad Compensation Act of February 19, 1898 {Laki rautatienkäytöstä aiheutuvien vahinkojen korvaamiscsta) and Custody Act (Holhouslaki) of August 19, 1898. See Kekkonen 1991 pp. 48-49.
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