the swedish court and appeal system abolishment of previous manor courts as a type of patrimonial courts. Instead of those, new parish courts were put in place, by and for peasants. These courts, however, were not included in the general court system and hierarchy, as had long been the tradition in the Kingdom of Sweden (as well as, by the nineteenth century the rest of Europe). In the Baltic governorates of the Russian empire, a separate court system was created for cases involving peasants.66 This connected with the general court hierarchy only on the very top and outside the home provinces – in the Ruling Senate.67 In 1832, the conditions of the revision complaint were also changed. Whereas according to the Swedish, and until that point also the Livonian law, it was possible to submit to revision any case independent of its worth, now a value census was instituted. Since 1832, only such cases that had an object worth more than 600 silver roubles could henceforth reach the Senate from the Livonian High Court, as from the rest of the empire’s high courts. On the other hand, the principle that only a final decision, not intermediate decisions or degrees, could be submitted to revision, was affirmed by the Russian governement still in the 1860s, referring, by the way, expressis verbis to the Swedish court laws and royal degrees, so called placats from the seventeenth century.68 Although it happened in certain cases that Livonian law and court systemmade clear attempts to turn back to Swedish-era law sources and principles, the general tendency in the second half of the nineteenth century was the opposite one: one towards the unification of the court system of the whole empire, which also included the subordination of the provinces with their special privileges to the general regulations. Against 66 For an overview of the function of the different instances, see: Luts-Sootak, Marju 2007a passim. 67 About the court cases of Estonian peasants in the Senate, where they generally did not manage to make their voice heard, see: Luts-Sootak, Marju 2007bpassim. The main hindrance was the fact that the courts on the provincial level were tasked with discussing the cases of peasants with focus on the content and little regard to formalities. The Senate, on the other hand, was bound by strict procedural rules. This meant that the revision and appellation complaints of peasants usually failed due to breaches of form. About the peasant courts in Estonia and Livonia, see also: Anepaio, Toomas 2007 pp. 107-119. 68 For a detailed account, see: Schmidt, Oswald 1880 pp. 167-175. 236
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