the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 264 at the court of appeal followed the established Roman law doctrine, while the opposing view was supported by reference to the practices and customs of major commercial countries.714 The comparison between the two courts is interesting for two reasons. First, issues related to insolvency and debtor-creditor relationships were very important and controversial in Sweden during the 1660s and 1670s. As the capital, Stockholm was naturally at the heart of the turbulence. Undoubtedly, both courts had many bankruptcy cases to decide. Secondly, the judges of the Town Court played an important role in the process of drafting the Commercial Section of the Code of 1734. Many individuals also served in both courts during their careers.715 However, when the first surviving draft of the commercial section was finally completed in 1718, there was no sign of a difference of opinion concerning the treatment of debtors between the two courts. In this chapter, I will analyse the context in which the fundamental principles of bankruptcy law were debated in the 1670s and reassess Jägerskiöld’s analysis. Iwill also seek to explain why such debates did not take place when the law reform project came to its conclusion. This chapter is based on an analysis of seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Swedish legislation, law proposals and secondary literature. The archival records concerning important bankruptcy cases cited by Jägerskiöld have also been studied for the purposes of reassessment. However, extensive new research on the Svea Court of Appeal case law has not been conducted. The main reason for this is the complexity and unwieldiness of seventeenth-century Swedish legal rules concerning insolvency. Recent international studies on the development of bankruptcy law in the early modern period underline the importance of procedural aspects and the development of precise legal concepts. According to De ruysscher, bankruptcy legislation in Antwerp developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the “integration of very diverse liquidation procedures.” This development was linked to the emergence of a more precise legal terminology in legislation and legal scholarship.716 The evolution of bankruptcy law doctrine in the early modern period has been studied in great detail by Forster, who criticizes earlier studies based on the contrast be714 Jägerskiöld, Stig 1967b pp. 320-323. 715 Jägerskiöld, Stig 1963 p. 127. 716 De ruysscher, Dave 2008 p. 326.
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