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COURTS OF JUSTICE.
315
A thorough-going reform of the general criminal code is about to be
undertaken. Dr. J. C. W. Thyrén, Professor at the Lund University, has
been entrusted with the task of compiling a preliminary outline with a
view to establishing the principles upon which the contemplated reform
should be based.
Courts of Justice.
Like all the more important sections of Swedish law, that relating to
legal procedure in the courts rests essentially on a national foundation.
The principal part of the body of laws in force at the present day consists
of the Code of 1734, the contents of which may be regarded as the result
of a secular course of development independent of foreign influence. The
history of the courts of justice in Sweden is not marked by any of those
revolutionary changes that have taken place from time to time in certain
other countries. Thus, the jury-system, which made its entrance so
triumphantly elsewhere, has hitherto not made the conquest of Sweden,
another device having been early adopted for affording laymen an
opportunity of having a share in the administration of justice; nor have there
existed at any epoch in Sweden, to the same extent as in other
countries, causes rendering the adoption of the jury-system a keenly longed-for
reform, such, for instance, as the subservience of the administrators of
justice to political influences and the exaggerations of legal procedure by
written documents. The principles indeed underlying the time-honoured
methods of legal procedure in Sweden seem still to possess so firm a hold
upon the minds of the public, that any attempt to bring about a radical
reform on the analogy of the institutions of other countries would meet
with but little chance of success.
In Sweden, as elsewhere, a distinction is made between General and Special
Courts of Justice. During the course of last century the Swedish system of
judicature was considerably simplified by the abolition of several courts whose
jurisdiction was limited in one direction or another, numbers of important
branches of juridical business being at the same time transferred from
administrative authorities to the purview of the Courts of Justice. Latterly, however,
there has become noticeable a certain tendency towards having cases that are
considered to require some amount of expert knowledge, dealt with by courts
presided over by judges duly selected with reference to such knowledge. The
General Courts of Justice are all of them, without discrimination, resorts both
for criminal and civil cases. Special Petty Courts of Justice, for the trying of
less serious cases, do not exist, nor is there any corresponding petty court
procedure. The only existing counterparts to petty courts are Police-Courts and Police
Chambers with judicial powers, which have been established in certain of the
larger towns.
As regards the lower courts of justice a town forms a jurisdictional unit
quite apart from that of the surrounding rural district. This
distinction of town from country dates from a time, previous to the enactment of
the Code of 1734, when rural districts and towns were governed by
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