259 theory of proof had to be based on clear rules to be able to legitimately replace the ordeals that spoke in the name of God. Under the rather well-entrenched political systems of the early Modern Age, part of the absolute ruler’s authority can be understood to have been vested in the judiciary. The latter could, therefore, take more liberties while applying the law of proof; as a consequence, there was room for middle categories of decision such as poenae extraordinariae to appear. For the centralizing political organizations of the Middle Ages, such as the Catholic Church, the gist of the legal theory of proof was about controlling the judiciary. Contrariwise, it may be assumed that by the early modernperiod the hierarchical court organization was, in many parts of Europe, developed enough so that the holders of power no longer needed to insist on the strict observance of the legal theory of proof to keep the courts on a leash. Howdo the judiciary’s relations to the political power above and to the subjects of the legal machinery below relate to the nineteenth-century transformation in the law of proof? The relation of the law of proof to power and legitimacy is quite transparent in countries where genuine bourgeois movements arose. With the free evaluation of evidence, the courts were granted an important right; that, however, created no serious legitimacy problems as the judiciary was reorganized with the help of the jury system, representing wider social segments than the ancien régime judiciary. Furthermore, the need of the power holders to control the judiciary vanished as the controlling political power and the judiciary to be controlled came together in the bourgeois revolutions. Later on in the century, as the social composition of the professional judiciary neared that of the bourgeoisie itself, the trial jury began to lose momentum. Howdoes Finland fit this scheme? It is reasonably clear that the Senate - the virtual holder of political power - had no interest in limiting the judiciary’s right to evaluate evidence freely. The most significant part of the Senate, after all, consisted of the same professional group as the judiciary - they were all jurists whose identity as a close-knit professional group was under forceful construction. As to the judiciary’s right, from the point of view of subjects of the legal system, to freely evaluate evidence, lax attitude toward a system of binding rules of proof has repeatedly been referred to above. The upper courts had, in fact, not really ever been able to get a firm grip on the local lower courts. Also therefore, the gradual transition toward what can be regarded theoretically as a “system” of free evaluation of evidence caused no great legitimacy problem that would have resulted in demands for a jury organization. Much like elsewhere in Europe, moreover, the influx of law students to Finland’s sole university in the last four decades of the nineteenth century came to mean that the professional judiciary was drawn increasingly fromthe middle strata of the population. That undoubtedly strengthened the legitimation basis of the modern lawof proof.
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