marju luts-sootak The High Court of Livonia functioned as a pure appellation court in respect to the court decisions from the courts of Ingermanland and Karelia (both outside of Livonia), from smaller towns in Livonia26 and the magistrate of the town Haapsalu (in German: Hapsal), located in the northern province, Estonia. Haapsalu had a special status – in 1561, just as the rest of the province of Estonia did, this small town had become a part of Sweden and was thus cut off from its former legal metropol Riga, which at the time was the capital of the duchy of Livonia in the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth. Therefore, the Swedish kings deemed it necessary to institute in Haapsalu the Lübeck town law that was used in other Estonian towns.27 In 1628, Haapsalu was purchased by count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, but it still remained the right of the king to determine the judicial subordination of the town. According to the court reform laws of 1630, the appellations to the judgements of the Haapsalu magistrate were therefore supposed to go to High Court of Dorpat. Consequently, there was a single court in the governorate of Estonia – the magistrate of Haapsalu – to which the Livonian High Court in Dorpat functioned as the court of second instance. Due to the opposition from the knighthood of Estonia and the magistrate of Reval, all the other land and town courts of Estonia were spared from this subordination, to the contrary of the Swedish administration's initial hopes that High Court of Dorpat would become the highest appellation instance for all courts in the Baltic provinces. 26 Shorter- or longer-term exceptions also existed, caused by the patrimonial court rights of counts over Pärnu (in German: Pernau) and Cesis (in German: Wenden; in Estonian: Võnnu). For a thorough account, see: Meurling, Anna Christina 1967 pp. 87-102; a short summary also in Pihlajamäki, Heikki 2014 pp. 252-254 27 Lübeck town law was given to Tallinn (in German: Reval) by Danish king Erik Plovpenning already 1248. The magistrate of Tallinn became the appellation instance for smaller Estonian towns Rakvere (in German: Wesenberg) and Narva, where the Lübeck law was also in effect. In the Swedish period (in Estonia, lasting 1561-1710), the appellation possibility from the Estonian towns to Lübeck was severed. From 1584 onwards, the appeals of decisions made by the magistrate of Tallinn were sent to the Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm. All the same, the Lübeck town law remained in effect in Estonian towns and they also adopted the revised Lübeck law of 1586, even though the Hanseatic town law family system was abolished. See Luts-Sootak, Marju 2013 pp. 117-123. 223
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