Legal Authorities in the Seventeenth-Century Swedish Empire

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Heikki Pihlajamäki

Published:

2021

Publisher:

Edinburgh University Press

From early on, in Sweden legal authority was exercised largely with the help of written statutes. Domestic legal scholarship emerged late and never acquired dominant authority in practical legal life, and much the same can be said about legal practice. Both legal scholarship and legal practice of the high courts grew in importance over the course of the seventeenth century, but their role remained less important than elsewhere in Europe. In Swedish overseas provinces, the legal-cultural background was different. The most effective channel of legal authority that the Swedes had – statute law – could not compete with other sources in either Livonia or the German territories. The professional jurists in the overseas provinces – used as they were to ius commune legal culture – proved difficult, if not impossible, to convert into humble servants of Swedish statute law.

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