general background – mia korpiola 29 mal adjudication of disputes,” especially civil litigation, “accompanied by a widespread interest in legal study, the development of a sophisticated legal profession, and the expansion of the royal judiciary.”36 What is then meant by the legal revolution in Sweden? Here it is considered to mean the unification of Swedish law and legal practice which could only be achieved by centralizing the judiciary and by submitting it to monitoring fromabove, royal control. In practice, a hierarchical system had to be established which screened – and if necessary reversed – the decisions and verdicts of the local courts. The completion of judicial centralization took at least a century to establish, this having already started in the Middle Ages when the local communities started to lose some of their powers. The right to elect judges became the right to nominate judges. In Sweden, this change was also inherently intertwined with the growing power of the king. In the early modern era, the discretion of the local courts and officials was increasingly eroded so that they were to abide by the letter of the law. By contrast, the king showed mercy through the prerogative of pardon and by adjudicating over cases in which the law was unclear or there was a gap. This also meant that all criminal cases were to be taken to court so that the revenues from the judiciary were to go to the king. Textbooks have called the seventeenth century a “transitional period when the so-called judicial revolution, a thorough juridification of society, took place in Sweden.”37 Others have seen the Swedish seventeenth-century centralization, harmonization and state control of the justice system and administration as the “juridical revolution” (juridinen vallankumous).38 The courts of appeal have been identified as the main instruments of the judicial revolution in Sweden. In his work on the Göta Court of Appeal, Rudolf Thunander discussed the establishment of the courts in the context of the judicial revolution (judiciella revolutionen), listing a number of consequences of the courts of appeal. The unification of the administration of justice and its rendering more effective have been highlighted as the “central background idea” of the courts of appeal. The court hierarchy 36 Kagan, Henry L. 1981 esp. pp. xx-xxii. 37 Pihlajamäki, Heikki – Pylkkänen, Anu 1999 pp. 26-27: “Koko 1600-lukua voidaan pitää ylimenokautena, jolloin Ruotsissa tapahtui niin sanottu oikeudellinen vallankumous, yhteiskunnan läpikotainen oikeudellistuminen.” 38 Kekkonen, Jukka 2002 pp. 62-63.
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