the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 344 uses the term “legal literate” to describe those men who had legal knowledge which they had gathered through clerking, or by collecting legal literature and conversing with other practitioners.1029 Very strict criteria on professionalism are problematic when looking at a country like Sweden. There are “many shades of legal learning” as Korpiola has put it.1030 While the establishment of the Svea Court of Appeal in itself represented a step towards professionalism, the court could in its early years hardly boast a corps of legally educated, full-time judges. Calling the judges amateurs, however, would do them an injustice. The term “men of law” seems quite befitting for the situation at the Svea court, too. There were assessors with a varied knowledge of the law, either through studies or practical experience – some of whommay even have been highly learned – but as a whole the court was not yet manned by a group of educated lawyers. In my view, a significant turn towards increased professionalism was taken when the court started to be staffed with men who had distinctly judicial careers instead of various administrative positions, and when almost all had a university education. This was the case roughly around the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For the judges to fulfil the requirements of even the stricter definitions of professionalism one would have to wait until the late eighteenth century. One last aspect of professionalism has to do with the models on which the court was structured. The corps of assessors of theReichskammergericht, founded in 1495, was to consist of eight noblemen and eight learned men. The learned men were supposed to have studied the ius commune and obtained a degree at a university. The Kammergerichtsordnung of 1521 articulated the wish that the men of noble birth should also have read law. In 1531, the requirements were defined so that five years of legal studies and practice in law were needed. In the 1550s the educational requirements were extended to apply to the noblemen as well, with the exception that a degree was not necessary for them. When enough educated noblemen could not be found, the court did not have to adhere to the rule that half had to be born noble. To improve the competence of the court, exams were also introduced. All these changes were aimed at increasing the court’s 1029 Vepsä, Iisa 2009 p. 244; Musson, Anthony 2003 pp. 37-39, 49-51; Bilder, Mary Sarah 1999 pp. 61-63, 85, 98. 1030 Korpiola, Mia 2009 section 37.
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