general background – mia korpiola 37 obligatory instance order forcing litigants to initiate a case at the lowest level court and then appeal it up the hierarchy. The various royal assizes seem to have heard all cases presented to them without necessarily insisting on the evidence of a previous wager or that the case had already previously been heard, investigated and decided at a lower instance.75 Thus, the 1442 law knew four types of court in the Swedish countryside. The older layer included the local district courts in which the local judge presided over the hundred jury and the lagman’s courts which had been changed so that the lagman toured his jurisdiction on circuit. The Statute of Royal InvestigationAssizes (räfstetingsstadga) of 1413 had decreed that when the king was unable to visit the region in person, the bishop and two members of his chapter sat with thelagmanand two royal councillors – or two other noblemen appointed by the bishop and lagman according to the 1442 law – on the panel of judges adjudicating in the king’s name. Thus bishops were first awarded a role in the secular judiciary in the Statute of Royal Investigation Assizes of 1413, confirmed in the 1442 law.76 The royal investigation assizes were amalgamated with the provincial assizes and sat at the capital of the province each year on a day appointed by the law. These tribunals seem to have been given some of the functions of the lagman’s court in the mid-fourteenth-century law.77 The other court forming part of newer layer of the judicial system was the royal revision assizes (rättareting), which were presided over by the king “or those who have his jurisdiction.” For the appellate court session, the district judge nominated a jury that was to be constituted fifty-fifty of noblemen and peasants, including the district judge himself, and accepted by both the parties and the inhabitants of the hundred. These had to be declared six weeks before the event and all the inhabitants of the hundred had to attend them on pain of a fine unless they had lawful cause. The decisions of the royal revision assizes were binding and nowager was allowed against then.78 Yet, despite the prohibition on wager, the king was under an obligation of pursue the truth in all cases and to overturn all wrong and unjust verdicts by virtue of his oath and duty.79 This was no ordinary 75 E.g., Hemmer, Ragnar 1949 p. 39. 76 Bjarne Larsson, Gabriela 1994 p. 62; KrL, R 9-10, pp. 110-111. 77 KrL, R 9-10, pp. 110-111. 78 KrL, R 40-41, pp. 119-120. 79 KrL, R 42, p. 120.
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