courts of appeal in norway Eventually the lawman was also recognized as being simply an appeal court judge in the countryside. He was nevertheless often consulted by the local courts in difficult cases.47 In a procedure which resembles, as Sunde has suggested, the German-Romanic institution of “Aktenversendung” to a certain extent, the appeal courts were asked to review the legal aspects of a case while the local courts limited themselves to determine the facts of the case.48 The difference is of course, that within the traditional procedure of “Aktenversendung” the files were sent to a faculty of law and not to another court. In contrast to the learned lawyers at the faculty who frequently based their decision on Roman Law or ius commune, the Norwegian appeal court judge had to rely on his practical experience and his knowledge of the local customs and legislation. However, as this practice evidently stood in the way of the establishment of a hierarchical legal system, it was expressly abolished by the Norwegian Code from 1687.49 At the beginning of the seventeenth century another important development took place. As a result of conscious attempts to make the legal system more efficient and to provide legal certainty, the selection and the qualifications of those who were appointed as appeal court judges was reformed fundamentally.50 From the point of view of the administration these reforms aimed to bind the judges to the will of the sovereign as expressed in the existing laws and other regulations.Again changes in the legal culture produced new expectations regarding the purpose and function of the legal system. A first step was the reform of legislation. Gradually it was made the only (official) source of law. In the sixteenth century the main sources of law in the Norwegian legal order – beside 47 It is not unlikely that a provision in the Norwegian Code of 1604 that gave thelagrettemen (lay judges in the first instance) the opportunity to delay the ruling by no more than six weeks if the matter was very complicated was interpreted by the courts in a way that they had no duty to make a decision earlier than six weeks after the case was made pending (stor og vidtløftig, at de ikke faa hastig begribe og forstaae den eller derpaa dømme, da slukde de har Fuldmagt at optage samme i 6 uger, men ikke længre.) Brorson, Christian 1797 p. 312 interprets this provision as the legislator’s attempt to give the lower court judges the opportunity to seek external advice. 48 Sunde, Jørn Øyrehagen 2010b p. 199. 49 Norwegian Code 1-2-3. 50 Næss, Hans Eyvind 2014 p. 122. 292
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