Sweden Judicial Jurisdictions

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Why Judicial Jurisdictions?
There are many reasons why you might want to search the Swedish court records for information about your ancestors. The courts were responsible for the processing of criminal and civil cases, but also for the recording of property transactions, the division of estates (probates and wills), and even death lists that were sent in by the parishes. Plus there is often a wealth of supporting documents for the cases. It is generally believed that most of the population can be found in the court records for one reason or another. But to search the court records, you have to know what judicial jurisdiction that your ancestor lived in. This article will help you identify the right court jurisdiction level and the associated records for your search. First let's look at how the judicial jurisdictions were formed.

Medieval - Mid 1600's
The oldest judicial jurisdiction in Sweden is the härad which predates written history, although some parts of the country use the name tingslag, bergslag, or skeppslag instead. Either way, each härad or "-slag" had a outdoor place of judgement (a tingplats) to process criminal offenses and civil disputes. Before 1523 there was no official kingdom of Sweden in the modern sense. It was a group of provinces (the Landskap), controlled to a large extant by families with strong political and military ties (Folkungar families) with an elected king to represent the groups in general. To strengthen the government’s position, cities were formed and were given special rights, including the establishment of city courts.

The häradsrätt (in rural areas) and the rådhusrätt (in the cities) were the first and most common level of jurisdiction to settle criminal offenses and civil disputes. If someone wanted to appeal a lower court’s decision, they had to appeal to the Monarchy and Council of the Realm before 1614, or to the Higher court (Hovrätt) after 1614. In 1634 the kingdom of Sweden was organized into counties (Län) and the judicial authority was tranfered from each province to the respective county authorities.

Mid 1600's - early 1900's
The chart below represents the organizational structure of the judicial system from the mid 1600’s up to the beginning of the 1900’s. See the table below the chart for English definitions and links for information about the records associated to each jurisdiction.



To print a copy of this chart with the definitions see:.