the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 18 one in a string of several experiments of organizing the highest judicial powers of the king, there were special circumstances that made the courts of appeal into a success story. Korpiola suggests that the establishment of the Court was necessary to provide the people with a show of good governance at a time of crisis. Because of the wars, the Crown needed an institution to handle the administration of justice and adjudicate appellate cases that had previously been referred to the Council of the Realm during the absences of King Gustav II Adolf from the capital on various campaigns. The exigencies of war that prompted the establishment of the new tribunal were so pressing that many practical matters related to the daily business of the Court had been left unregulated when the Court started its work in May 1614. No clear-cut divide was made between the powers of the Svea Court of Appeal and the monarch during his long absences from the capital and during ordinary circumstances when the King returned home. Courts vis-à-vis other courts are the subject of Marko Lamberg and Heikki Pihlajamäki. While Lamberg focuses on the relations and interaction between the new royal Court of Appeal and the Stockholm Town Council and the local Town Court, Pihlajamäki applies the notion of legal transfers to the courts of appeal in Sweden. The point of departure for Lamberg is the establishment of the Svea Court of Appeal that reduced the status of the Town Court of Stockholm and its burgher judges to some extent. Lamberg suggests that the local court may have occasionally been inclined to favour local litigants and the town’s economic interests in its interpretations, but that the Svea Court of Appeal, having a more detached attitude, took its role as guarantor of justice for individuals seriously. Despite the occasional flaring of tensions, the courts maintained working cooperation with one another. The Svea Court of Appeal forced the Town Court to pay attention to the letter of the law and its proper interpretation, while relieving the burghers of some justice-related work. Heikki Pihlajamäki compares two Swedish courts of appeal, Svea and Dorpat (present-day Tartu) in Swedish Livonia in terms of legal culture. He observes that in establishing the Dorpat Court after the model of Svea, the local context was taken into consideration to some extent. In practice however the local legal culture, more learned and more feudal as it was, made the Dorpat Court an unmistakably different court of appeal from the Svea Court. It was more European and more learned, using torture as a matter
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