63 or abroad.Fromthe middle of the century onwards roughly a majority of the high court judges had at least some formal legal training. It was through the activity of these learned jurists that ius commune^ Roman law, began to sift through to Swedish judicial practice. Before 1653, when high court assessors were enfeoffed with the offices of hundred court judges,^' the noble country court judges did not personally preside over their courts. Since the judicial offices were enfiefed to the nobility by privilege, the noblemen hired low-born and (at the beginning of the 1600s) uneducated “law-readers” to preside over the courts, which caused a rather poor level of legal knowledge in the lower courts.^- Some of the law-readers were recruited from high court practicants auskultanter”)^^ after this institution was initiated at the High Court of Svea in 1627,3“* although high court practice was by no means a compulsory qualification. The practicants learned their trade by observing the work of high court judges at sessions; sometimes they also kept record and acted as advocates on cases assigned to themin the high court.35 After the founding of the high courts and universities (see below), the scholarly level of the law-readers rose steadily, so that 72 % of the law-readers active in Finland in 1653-1680 had either studied at a university or had practiced in a high court.3^> Whereas law-readers had previously lacked legal training but had been fairly well acquainted with the local circumstances, the situation reversed itself: instead of knowledge of local people, customs and places, legal training became more and more important as the seventeenth century advanced.37 Another factor that contributed to the gradual increase in the level of For Svc.i High Court, Pctrén 1964 pp. 67—72; for the High Court of Turku, Blomstedt 1973 pp. 88-97; and for Göta High Court, Thunandcr 1993 pp. 32-35. On the reception of Roman law in Sweden in general, Jägerskiöld 1963. From 1653 onwards, the assessors had personally to preside over at least one third of the yearly court sessions; the rest could be taken over by' law-readers. With the Reduction of 1680, all court sessions were presided over by the judges themselves. Blomstcdt 1958 pp. 270, 320. The enfeoffment of judiciary’ offices formed an integral part of the Crown’s efforts to centralize judicial administration; as offices were granted to noblemen by the king, the initial confessional relationship between the local community, which until Gustavus Vasa had been in charge of electing the judges, broke. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, law-readers presided over most local courts in Finland. Ibid. pp. 35, 40, 198; Thunandcr 1993 pp. 226-263. Of the 120 practicants at the Göta High Gourt between 1635—1680, 14 became law-readers; some were sons of older law-readers. Thunander 1993 pp. 244-245. -’•* Blomstedt 1958 p. 222. Perhaps they received some theoretical teaching as well {ibid. p. 225), but they probably’ did not followcourt sessions at hundred courts and were therefore often criticized for a lack of practical knowledge. Ibid. p. 226. Ibid. p. 304. In southwestern Finland, the amount of lower court judges (most often: lawreaders) with some legal training or a high court practice rose from3%in 1600-1623 to 100%in 1653—1680; ibid. p. 346. Modeer 1983 p. 128. 37
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