danish courts of appeal previous un-homogeneous legal system began to develop towards more homogeneous and hierarchical structures. After 1736 we begin to see the structures of the modern Danish legal system known today; a development made possible by the professionalization of the members of the court, first of all the bailiffs and the judges, later of the lawyers and procurators too. And finally, after 1821, of the judges at the superior courts, i.e. the provincial courts and the Supreme Court established in 1661, following the introduction of absolutism in Denmark-Norway.8 In this article I will give a survey of the development of the Danish courts of appeal, showing that the appeal courts of contemporary Denmark are the result of a slow, almost customary development founded on the court system taking shape in Denmark in the High Middle Ages. Originally, the medieval Danish legal system did not consist of a hierarchy of courts in which a case could be appealed from a lower court to a higher court, on the contrary.9 The system was horizontal. This was mainly due to the fact that the power structures of medieval Denmark did not pave the way for introducing a hierarchical, formalized structure when it came to the legal system. The horizontal legal system is known from the Danish provincial laws dating to the late twelfth and first half of the thirteenth centuries. This even goes for the legal system revealed in the royally promulgated Law of Jutland (Jyske Lov) dating to 1241, even though the Law of Jutland was clearly written by well-trained lawyers. The Law of Jutland namely indirectly reveals that the development of procedural law and institutional administration of justice can be seen as the expression of a uniquely Danish way to administer justice or as an adaptation of contemporary legal ideas into the framework of the already existing, traditional Danish administration of justice. Thus, the Law of Jutland reflects a qualitatively different stage of learned law than other Danish medieval collections of 8 Tamm, Ditlev 1989 pp. 123. 9 Andersen, Per 2011; Andersen, Per 2010. 248 The origin: The medieval Danish court system
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=