mixed legal systems – kjell å. modéer 401 To sum up: there is now quite a different and more complete picture of the availability of the early modern records on the high courts in the Baltic sea area than in the post-WW II era, which gives the legal historians in this research area great opportunities for comparative legal history. The secular professional courts with jurisdiction delegated from the emperor or king were introduced all over early modern Europe giving quite a new structure to this institution. In Sweden this trans-European judicial revolution peaked first during the seventeenth century when state control over the administration of justice was considerably enhanced by the establishment of courts of appeal, the professionalization of judges and jurists and the increase in crown officials at the local and administrative levels. Although Sweden was already among the most highly centralized states in Europe at the turn of the seventeenth century, the enactment of uniform jurisdiction and consistent legal praxis was a slow process. Beside the various royal statutes, supplements and ordinances intended to revise the medieval secular legislation, several procedural modifications were introduced that together altered and systematized the legal praxis around the extensive Swedish Empire. Nonetheless, the judicial customs remained diverse; the lower courts carried on their local ways in many respects, creating dynamics and problems in relation to legal reform. The judicial revolution had its formal breakthrough in Sweden in 1614 with the introduction of the judicial reform that year, as shown in Mia Korpiola’s current research on the formative period of the Court of Appeal and its foundation in a period of judicial and legal crisis.1154 The Swedish judicial revolution took place in an obvious conflict between tradition and change. The king’s traditional exclusive jurisdiction was upheld despite being delegated to an autonomous institution, the Court of Appeal, chaired by the holder of one of the medieval royal offices, the Lord High Justice, or drots, responsible for law and justice. There always has to be a crisis in the establishment of a new institution. In Sweden the crisis at that time in Sweden was related to war and the economy. Since Gustav II 1154 See Mia Korpiola’s articles in this volume e.g. pp 25 ff, 92 ff. The Judicial Revolution and the Professionalization of the Judiciaries
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