danish courts of appeal century. A transfer would then depend on the judge’s agreement or initiative. Later on, this development was followed by rules pinpointing the necessity to pursue one’s case at the right first instance court, and finally, with the coronation charter of 1536, the possibility of transferring a case before a sentence had been passed by the first instance was finally ended.21 By this time, a hierarchy of courts had been confirmed time and time again. King ChristianII’s Land Law (Landlov) dating from 1522 introduced a formal, normative and comprehensive description of the system of appeals from the provincial court to the (now more formalized) Royal Court, stipulating that the appellant had 10 days from the pronouncement of a sentence to approach the judge of the provincial court to request an appeal to the Royal Court, upon which the judge was obliged to issue a letter confirming that the appeal had been properly requested. After the Reformation in 1536, this system of appeals was confirmed in ChristianIII’s coronation charter and in royal recesses dating from 1537, 1539, 1547 and 1558. The recess issued by ChristianIII in 1539 pulled together central elements of the new hierarchy of courts. Thus, it stipulated that, firstly, no one could be summoned from the district court or the provincial court by a king’s letter before a sentence had been passed. Secondly, that a plea had to be entered in front of the official of the court or the provincial court’s judge before it was heard by the Royal Court. Thirdly, all sentences that were to be appealed were to be clearly described and sealed or signed by both parties before being presented to the king. Fourthly, the first- and second-instance courts had to have passed sentence before the king did so. These stipulations were reiterated in many individual cases when the parties wished to present their case directly to the king. From the end of the sixteenth century, it was even common practice to explicitly state the sequence of appeals – and thus reject cases out of hand that had not previously been decided by the district and provincial court – at the public proclamation of time and place when the Royal Court would be convened.22 21 Andersen, Per 2011 pp. 224-227. 256
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