central and peripheral courts hear appeals from only three territories in the Austrian Netherlands: in the other principalities of the Hapsburg Netherlands, the provincial court acted as the supreme appellate court.22 Here again, however, the full picture is even more complex, for the Privy Council, which was primarily a government body, also acted as a quasi-jurisdictional institution, and its jurisdiction covered the whole of the Hapsburg territories in the Netherlands.23 In the United Provinces, a very comparable result was reached from a completely different starting point. When the Northern Provinces became independent, they maintained their own provincial judicial system. However, proposals were made to create a supra-provincial appellate court, which, for the newly independent provinces, would have replaced the Great Council of Mechelen. Those proposals met with strong resistance. A ‘High Council’ (Hoge Raad) was established in 1582, but originally, its jurisdiction did not reach beyond the province of Holland. A few years later, Zeeland was persuaded to join the scheme, but the Hoge Raad, until the very end of the Ancien Régime, only acted as a supreme appellate court for those two provinces, while the other provinces of the confederation retained their judicial sovereignty.24 The eighteenth-century rationalist ideals, often expressed more geometrico, sometimes found their way into judicial reforms. One such example is the attempt of Joseph II in 1784 to introduce a complete new judicial system in the Austrian Netherlands. The reform would have done tabula rasawith the complex system of courts developed since the Middle Ages, and replaced it with a typical pyramidal system: one supreme court of revision, two courts of appeal, and 63 first-instance courts.25 The system26 failed due to the violent conservative opposition against the emnally, the Privy Council) sat on anad hoc basis during the revision proceedings. With regard to the Privy Council, it seems that the latter could decide to take a case pending before the Great Council, and perhaps it could also reconsider a case adjudicated by the Great Council, but so far, too little is known about such procedures or quasi-procedures. 22 Verscuren, An 2015. 23 De Schepper, Hugo 1998 pp. 39-48. 24 Verhas, Christel 1997. 25 Tesch, Marie-Eve 2004 pp. 113-161 26 The judicial reforms of Joseph II were carried out, with different success, in various terri42
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