suum cuique tribuere – elsa trolle önnerfors 195 The origin of the nobility’s forum privileges in the court of appeal was the nobility’s right of direct access to the king’s justice and the right to be judged by their peers. This was a forum system which was found in several European countries during the early modern period. But what was the actual value of theforum privilegiatumin seventeenth-century Sweden? The judicial privileges did not exempt noblemen from trial or punishment. The nobles were not immune to the course of justice. The right to trial by one’s peers and the right to go directly to the higher courts were primarily honorific benefits. It conferred a distinction of treatment rather than an inequality.550 The principle of forum privilegiatumand trial by one’s peers persisted as the principal means of judging noblemen for several hundred years, but the extent of this privilege varied over time. During the Age of Liberty at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the nobility reclaimed the political power and the forum privilege expanded.551 The tasks of the appeal courts were regulated in the code of judicial procedure in the Code of the Realm of 1734, which among other things stated that the court of appeal should be the first instance in disputes over inheritance, property and guardianship in which parties from the nobility were involved. The court of appeal should also be a privileged forum for the nobility in cases concerning Estates, duels and defamation.552 The forum privilege in the disputes above-mentioned also included the foreign nobility who lived in Sweden.553 In general, adistinct tolerance of the noble privileges could be seen until the late eighteenth century, and the privileges remained quite secure up till the time of the French revolution. But after the revolution, and in view of the Enlightenment, the privileged position of the European nobilities weakened gradually (and in some cases such as France, quite radically).554 By the mid nineteenth century, the noble privileges of the European no550 Bush, Michael L. 1983 pp. 76-77. 551 The constitution of 1720 (paragraph 23) and the privileges of the nobility of 1723, von Konow, Jan 2005 pp. 198-200. 552 Code of the Realm of 1734, the code of judicial procedure, chapter 8:2, printed inSveriges rikes lag: Gillad och Antagen på Riksdagen Åhr 1734. 553 The forum privilege at the appeal court for the foreign nobility was established in a royal letter of 26 October 1748, printed in Modée, Reinhold Gustaf 1756 pp. 28042805, and was abolished on 1 January 1896, SFS1895:92. 554 Scott, Hamish M. 1995 pp. 278-279.
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