mixed legal systems – kjell å. modéer 413 tions to the nobility had to be respected in inheritance disputes as well. The often close economic relations between the King and the nobility could direct the procedure and influence the decisions in the conflicts. The qualitative finding of Lahtinen’s study is how the freedom of contract with the help of wills and donations directed the inheritance conflicts to a great extent up to the Statute of Wills in 1686. The many economyrelated cases can also be interpreted within this context of external dependence because of the repossession of Crown land during the reign of the absolutist King Charles XI. In her article, Elsa Trolle Önnerfors gives an overview of the transition of theforum privilegiatumfor the nobility arising from social and economic factors. The expansion of the nobility both quantitatively and qualitatively (high nobility, low nobility, foreign nobility) and the extended jurisdiction explains the transition of this exclusive estate-based forum throughout the seventeenth century. One important synergy effect for the court as aforum privilegiatumfor the nobility was a more qualitative procedure the presence of trained lawyers as representatives of the parties. The lawyers in Stockholm appear as a part of the judicial revolution in the early seventeenth century, not only in the Court of Appeal but also in the Town Court of Stockholm. Their contribution to the qualitative legal discourses in the civil cases demonstrated the presence of a professional group of trained lawyers of importance for the transition of the legal culture into a state more influenced by international elements.1174 Elsa Trolle Önnerfors demonstrates the characters of the nobility disputes regarding economic matters, landed property, land ownership and family law (especially inheritance and wills) in the seventeenth century. By selecting samples of the records of the Court for 1650, 1660, 1670, 1680 and 1690, she is able to use the legal-political contexts to analyse some 100 cases of how the court performed its role as a forum privilegiatumfor the nobility within thesuum cuique tribuerejurisdiction paradigm. This is an example of an important research survey which at the same time demonstrates the need for further research. 1174 See Elsa Trolle Önnerfors’s article in this volume, p. 175.
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