the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 374 Does the Motif of the Seals Represent Independence or Subordination? The new crest is not surprising, since Baron von Strokirch had been a judge for almost thirty years at the time, first in 1779 a deputy district judge, in 1781 a district judge, in 1806 a justice of the Supreme Court and in 1810 apresident of the Svea Court of Appeal.1116 Whether he or the herald of the realm suggested the crest is not known, but there is every reason to believe that von Strokirch in one way or the other made up his mind about the way the symbol of justice should look. Regardless of what notions von Strokirch may have had about this, it is interesting to consider whether the meaning of the symbols on the seal changed in some way. If the old position of the pair of scales symbolized justice as suum cuique tribuere, the new position of the scales symbolizes the equality between goods and payment and – in contrast to the suum cuique notion – equality before the law.1117 This means that the change in the symbol was made in an appropriate time period. The constitution of 1809 had kept the four estates, but the struggle for another type of parliament had begun. The various jurisdictions for different types of professions were to be abolished, and free trade and commerce increased. The different laws for country and town had been replaced by the Swedish Law Code in 1734, but in the 1810s a commission worked with a proposal for new law codes, inspired by a European liberal movement. The change from unbalanced to balanced scales thus coincides with the change from the society of the estates to the emerging society of the citizen, fromsuum cuique to equality before the law. The year 1818 also saw the succession of Charles XIVJohn (1763–1844, r. 1818–1844) to the throne, a year thus symbolizing anew era. When I discussed the relation between the seal of the High Council and that of the Svea Court of Appeal, I concluded that the seal of the Svea Court of Appeal, with its lack of a royal crown and the three coronets taken out of the shield, is more the seal of a permanent, and thus in a way independent court of law than the seal of the High Council was. On the other hand, the lack of the royal crown above the shield gives the impres1116 Anjou, A. 1899 p. 18. 1117 Cf. Kissel, Otto Rudolf 1997 p. 95.
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