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306
III. CONSTITUTION AND ADMINISTRATION.
written law, the evolution of Swedish law was to follow a path resembling the
pursued by English law; that was obviated, among other causes, by the ancieii
Swedish tradition, handed down from the days of the Shire Laws, that the legs
tenets in force must be systematically codified and that the succession of th
epochs in the evolution of the law should be marked by one legal code bein
compiled to take the place of another.
In 1686 Charles XI appointed a number of duly qualified men to form t
so-called Law Commission with the task assigned to them of compiling
new Code. The suggestions that body made, after having been many time
deliberated upon and revised, were finally passed by the Riksdag ii
1734 and were ordered by the King to come into force on September 1
1736. This new Code, "Sveriges rilies lag av år 1734", occupies a worthj
place in the series of codifications of Swedish law. Compiled on th(
basis of the Borough and Country Laws as well as of later promulgatec
laws and the practice of the courts, it amalgamates borough law anc
country law in one Code, reducing but not altogether obliterating th<
differences between the two. Keeping close to Swedish traditions in re
spect to language, systematisation and contents, it constitutes, though dui
note is taken of many of the contributions made by Germano-Roman Lat?
to the evolution of Swedish legal conceptions and judicial practice, wha’
may be fitly termed the Swedish law system’s Declaration of Independent
in relation to that alien law itself.
The method of procedure for the writing of laws that was inaugurated
by the constitution of the Law Commission, has been retained, althougl
other methods have been made use of as well. The Law Commission itsell
continued to exist until 1808, since when, with some few exceptions, 2
similar institution has been carrying on the same work, first under thf
designation of Law Committee and later under that of Law-Drafting
Board. These successors to the Law Commission have taken over from ii
by inheritance the talent for composing the actual wording of their draf!
laws with a care and exactitude greater than are usually met with in thf
laws of most other nations. The necessity of having more thorough-going
amendment of the existing law first became apparent after the ideas oi
the Age of Enlightenment had successfully penetrated. The Swedish
criminal law, from the first comparatively mild in character, experienced a
series of changes in a humanitarian direction which found collective
expression in the new Criminal Code of the Year 1864. Meanwhile, in the
department of civil law as affecting private individuals, the claims of
individualism were attended to by the introduction of the principle of equal
rigths for men and women in respect to the law of inheritance, by the
enactment of more extended power of disposition of real estate for the
holder thereof, etc., etc. The economic revolution, which commenced in
the earlier part of the nineteenth century, necessitated the substitution oi
new laws for the old-fashioned trade and property ordinances and an
extensive addition to the provisions for instance of the law as to obligations.
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