n 1730 jørgenbilde, the chief administrative officer of one of the counties (amt) in the province of Jutland, complained that the acting judges of the county were “unlettered, partial, had bad intentions I and were in general incompetent to perform as judges.”1 According to Jørgen Bilde, many of the judges had several economic interests besides their official task and were more concerned about protecting or even expanding these interests than acting as impartial judges. Bilde’s criticism was not new but similar to the conclusion drawn by the central administration in Copenhagen in the late 1680s following the collection of information about the officers who ran the local district courts (herredsting). In 1660 the absolute monarchy had been introduced in the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway, and in 1683 the first law-book for the Danish part of the realm – the Danish Code (Danske Lov) – had harmonized legal matters,2 in 1687 supplemented by the Norwegian Code (Norske Lov) for the Norwegian part of the realm. However, the king and his central administration still lacked a comprehensive view of the legal system and the legal officers acting at the local courts and thus made inquiries into it. The information was needed to re-organize the legal system in such a way that it became in accordance with the new political system: One could not have an absolute king and a more or less non-homogeneous and unlettered legal system. So, in June 1686 the bailiffs acting as judges and the scribes attending the courts in the local districts or in the peculiar judicial districts directly under the king or a nobleman (birk) were ordered by the judges at the superior provincial courts (landsting) to give information on their competences.3 danish courts of appeal 1 Jørgen Bildes Forslag, p. 216. 2 Kong Christian den Femtes Danske Lov; Tamm, Ditlev 1983 pp. xix-xlvii; Iuul, Stig 1954; Wagner, Wolfgang 1983; Fabricius, Knud 1920; Ellehøj, Svend 1983. 3 Hammerich, Kai Fr. 1931 pp. 60-67. 246 Introduction
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