marju luts-sootak was included in the new codes was the already existing law, shaped by the forces of history. Medieval law books of the Baltic provinces, acts of Holy Roman emperors and imperial diets, the orders of Polish and Swedish rulers, local codification projects, the autonomy law of the estate corporations, and customary law all contributed to these new codes. The main innovation was in fact that parts of these legal sources, codified in the new codes, were granted the imperial or, in the language of the time, “highest of all” (in German: allerhöchst) authority, investing them with the full force of modern law. Indeed, the ruler had to be convinced that the law he was confirming had indeed been shaped by history, not invented by the codifiers. This goal was served by the numerous references to historical sources, included in both the articles of the Russian Collection of Laws or Digest of Russian Law(in Russian:Свод законов Российской империи; 15volumes1832-1835)and the Baltic provincial law codes.43 These references are also helpful for present-day legal historical research, even though it cannot be guaranteed that they are always accurate. In addition, thorough historical overviews were added to the new codes in order to give historical justification to the norms included there.44 The codes themselves and the historical overviews were both immediately translated and published in Russian, in addition to the original German version. In any case, these historical overviews have to be recognised as what they are: a kind of hagiographical history writing, where the end result of the historical development – the laws compiled in the provincial law codes – is already known for the author and the overview is merely supposed to justify its existense. The nineteenth century also saw the publication of a general overview of the legal history of the Baltic provinces,45 as well as a thorough over43 In addition to the first two volumes mentioned, another volume of the Baltic provincial law, containing civil law, was approved in 1864: Provincialrecht III 1864. The initially promised fourth and fifth volumes, which had reached the form of drafts in both 1845 and 1866 and concerned civil and criminal procedure, remained unconfirmed. 44 Geschichtliche Uebersicht AT 1845; Geschichtliche Uebersicht BT 1845; Geschichtliche Uebersicht BT-3 1862. 45 Schmidt, Oswald 1894a; about Russian-era court system in the Baltic provinces, focusing only on the reform discussions of 1860s, pp. 361-365. 229
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