marju luts-sootak As far as court system and subordination are concerned, we have to admit that the Swedish-era Livonian High Court or Court of Appeal was neither exclusively and fully an appellation court, nor only and without exception the highest court in Livonia. Its body of judges was of similarly mixed origin – some of the members were appointed by the king, some by the Livonian knighthood; some were nobles, some were commoners, some had legal education, some did not.32 However, the number of educated lawyers, not only in the High Court, but even in the lower courts of Livonia was large enough to apply the strict procedural law of the German version of the Europeanius commune, which remained largely alien to the Swedish laymen dominated court system in the early modern era in spite of its numerous legal loans.33 It is possible that the homogenisation of the Livonian court system with that of the Swedish motherland might have become reality over time, but such processes and aspirations were cut short by the Great Northern War, which turned the Swedish overseas provinces into the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire. Subsequently, I will attempt to answer the question whether and how extensively this transfer interrupted the functioning of the Swedish-era court and appellation system in Livonia. During the Great Northern War, the towns and estates in both Livonia and Estonia capitulated in 1710 to the Russian Tsar Peter the Great. Therefore, this date could be considered the ending point for the history of Swedish court and appellation system in Livonia. To theHofgericht in the town Dorpat, the Great Northern War had indeed been a fatal blow already before 1710. Dorpat was conquered by Russian troops in 1704. Already in 1702, the High Court was evacuated from the war zone to the 32 For a general overview of the recruitment of Livonian court personnel and the tensions between Swedish central administration and the Livonian knighthood, see Meurling, Anna Christina 1967 pp. 110-141. 33 This is one of the main conclusions of Pihlajamäki, Heikki 2014. 225 The court system in the LivonianRussian capitulations of 1710
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