Kanslern och den akademiska friheten

Striderna vid den juridiska fakulteten i Uppsala under 1850-talet

Abstract

During the first half of the nineteenth century, it was the custom for the Crown Prince to be the chancellor of Uppsala University (and also, from 1824, of the University of Lund). This arrangement, which gave the royal family a direct influence over university affairs, was highly anomalous as members of the royal family since 1809 were prohibited to hold civil office. As the University underwent major changes in the middle of the century, the role of the Crown Prince was increasingly questioned.

In the 1850s open conflict arose at Uppsala between the Faculty of Law and the Senate on the one hand and the chancellor and his secretary on the other. When the vacant chair in civil law was to be filled, the chancellor spoke openly against the appointment of Knut Olivecrona, who had been recommended by the Faculty of Law and the Senate, instead proposing his confidant Carl Axel Juel, who had only narrowly been considered qualified by his own faculty.

Heated disputes broke out which reached a climax with the famous ”chancellor’s rebuke” in 1855. The debate spilled over into the liberal press, which criticized the holding of the office of chancellor by the Crown Prince. Following the accession to the throne of Carl XV in 1859 the civil servant Gustaf Adolf Vive Sparre was appointed university chancellor. With that, royal occupancy of the post of chancellor was consigned to history.