mixed legal systems – kjell å. modéer 417 ing foreign policy of the sons of king Gustav I Vasa in the 1560s, firmly established under the reign of Gustav II Adolf and reaching its peak during the reign of his daughter Christina (1632 – 1654), the Treaty of Westphalia 1648 and her successors Charles XGustav (1654 – 1660) and the absolute Kings Charles XI and Charles XII (1697 –1718). When the Svea Court of Appeal was founded in 1614, it was not only created within this seventeenth-century chronology, but also had its political and economic roots, its background and development within this early modern period. The aim of this book has been not only to reinterpret the original sources of the court but also to update the research on the supreme and appellate courts in relation to previous historical constructs and even myths regarding the Svea Court of Appeal and its national and international contexts. Stockholm, the capital of the rising Swedish empire, became a major city by European standard in the Baltic Sea area and a centre of trade and commerce in the seventeenth century. One effect of this internationalization of early modern Swedish commerce was the adoption of a luxurious lifestyle by Swedish elites, especially in Stockholm. Another effect was many legal conflicts with international parties involved; conflicts which ended up in the Svea Court of Appeal. In his contribution to the book, Jussi Sallila has investigated the bankruptcy cases in the courts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Stig Jägerskiöld’s position was that cessio bonorumand the institution of individual bankruptcy were influences from the Corpus Iuris Civilis and European Roman law scholarship. Sallila, however, puts this case law into the larger context in which the fundamental principles of bankruptcy law were debated, and he gives a broader analysis based on commercial and financial law. He also identifies the central role of Svea Court of Appeal in the process of unifying bankruptcy law practice.1180 Sallila emphasizes the important relationship between material and formal law and the necessity to determine how the procedural rules were applied. He defines the bankruptcy legislation in Sweden as an example of the previously mentioned Swedish exceptionalism, representing a mix of 1180 See Jussi Sallila’s article in this volume, p. 288. Expanding Commerce, Finance and Legal Conflicts as well as Legal Reform
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