danish courts of appeal which included two noblemen and two professors who had studied law abroad, and this meant that the Court had a clear legal advantage in relation to other courts in Denmark, at least until the middle of the eighteenth century as the ordinance on the law degree was issued in 1736, demanding the lower courts to employ only learned judges. The decree from 1736 shows very well the paradox which Danish law found itself in at the beginning of the 1700s. On the one hand there was a reliable legal basis in the Danish Code, which for the first time had unified Danish law in 1683.51 The Danish Code was based on and was in fact a compilation of earlier rules derived from the post-reformatory legislation and the medieval provincial laws.52 By way of introduction – fully in line with the absolute rule – and unequivocally it established that it was only the King’s privilege to interpret the law and thereby create either new, necessary legislation or set up a precedent.53 Not even the Supreme Court was allowed to interpret the law, but just had to present the text in relation to specific cases.54 Thus, the law, which was an expression of Danish law and the King’s will, should be obeyed without hesitation or involvement of other legal considerations. On the other hand, already at its promulgation, the Danish Code was far from an amendatory and supplementary act or, for that matter, updated to be able to clarify all the questions which arose in a society undergoing changes. Quite quickly it was therefore clear that in practice it was necessary to supplement with other acquisitions of knowledge and legal sources if the judges in the different parts of the kingdom should be able to solve their tasks.55 This became more and more evident, and thus the ordinance of 1736 on the law degree also required that the candidate should be knowledgeable about natural law, the Danish Code, the Norwegian Code, the Danish-Norwegian procedural law, and the terminology pertaining to Roman law known fromInstitutiones. To be able to obtain a high mark, one also needed to have knowledge of Roman inter51 Tamm, Ditlev 2011a pp. 69-74. 52 Iuul, Stig 1954 pp. 72-81. 53 Kong Christian den Femtes Danske Lov Book 1, Chapter 1, § 1. 54 Björne, Lars 1995 p. 155. 55 Tamm, Ditlev 1989 pp. 135-61. 268
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