Marianne Vasara-Aaltonen

The Svea Court of Appeal, founded in Stockholm in 1614, represented a new type of a superior royal tribunal in early modern Sweden. While the first century of the Court has merited scholarly attention before this, fresh insights have been gained by asking new questions, using comparative methods and rereading the sources. This volume contains ten essays and a concluding chapter. They shed new light on the Svea Court of Appeal making law, personifying justice and forming part of the power structures of Sweden. The essays also highlight the legal actors: king, judges, litigants and mag­istrates of Stockholm. The volume reinterprets the founding and role of the Court as well as it provides new perspectives on its activity.

In Learning Law and Travelling Europe, Marianne Vasara-Aaltonen offers an exciting account of the study journeys of Swedish lawyers in the early modern period. Based on archival sources and biographical information, the study delves into the backgrounds of the law students, their travels through Europe, and their future careers. In seventeenth-century Sweden, the state-building process was at its height, and trained officials were desperately needed for the administration and judiciary. The book shows convincingly that the studies abroad of future lawyers were intimately linked to this process, whereas in the eighteenth century, study journeys became less important. By examining the development of the Swedish early modern legal profession, the book also represents an important contribution to comparative legal history.