the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 226 nung § 8, the following types of case belonged to the Court of Appeal jurisdiction as well: all cases concerning land privileges, inheritance, succession, possession of noble goods, and serious crimes (nec non atrocissimarum injuriarum) by noblemen.612 Another interesting addition to the Court of Appeal jurisdiction came from the LGO1632 Art. 10, which stated that if peasants had claims against their lords or stewards, or the like ([…] Herrschaft, und deren Hauptund Amptleute oder Arendatoren […]), because of excessive workloads or overly harsh treatment ([…] wegen übermässiger Bedrückung und unträglicher Schärffe […]), these claims were to go to the Court of Appeal directly. Even if a peasant did not make an official claim, a land court judge finding about an oppressive situation was obliged to advise the suspect to employ “moderate behavior” (Moderation). Should he not comply, the judge was to inform the Court of Appeal.613 The normative content of the paragraph obviously relates to the contemporary German situation. In the German territories, as a result of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century peasant uprisings, peasant-lord relations had become a distinctly legal matter. Literature, both pro-peasant and pro-landowner, had emerged.614 The principal differences from the Swedish Court of Appeal regulation were the following. Firstly, no right of appeal in cases of denegatio iustitiae had been adopted into the Swedish laws. Neither the relevant paragraph of the Swedish Ordinance of Judicial Procedure 1614 or the 1615 Procedural Rules for the Court of Appeal thus contain a paragraph corresponding to the LivonianLCO1632 Art. X. The reasons are obvious. The Swedish peasants needed less protection than their Livonian counterparts because the conditions of Livonian peasants were much worse than those of Swedish peasants. The peasant-lord relations had not become a matter of 612 According to § 8 LGO, if a nobleman was caught red-handed committing a crime, he was to be taken into custody and questioned at the local lower court, after which the documents and the suspect were to be delivered to the Government in Riga. See also Sammlung der Gesetze, vol. 2, ed. Buddenbrock, p. 24, who says that at his time (the early nineteenth century) the norm was still in full force, except that the case file was then no longer sent to the Governor first but straight to the Court of Appeal. Interestingly, the Swedish Ordinance of Judicial Procedure §14 (of which § 8 LGOwas by and large a compendium) stated that crimes - committed by all noblemen, not just those caught in flagrante delicto, were to be considered at lower courts and then decided at appeals courts. 613 LGO1632, Art. X, Sammlung der Gesetze, vol. 2, ed. Buddenbrock, p. 93. 614 The German scholarship speaks of Verrechtlichung; see Schulze, Winfried 1990 p. 133.
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