What Kind of Legal Questions Were Being Asked
The design and style of advice columns were decided by newspaper editorial staffs. They were also influenced through the interaction of many parties: in addition to the expert-advisor(s) and the advice-seekers, publishers, editors, and the reading audience.[643] Thus, it is understandable that the formats of Q&A columns varied from newspaper to newspaper.
While some questions were in a personalised letter form between advice-seekers and experts,[644] it became the standard that the so-called problem letters were truncated so that identity markers were largely omitted notwithstanding the pseudonyms which could, for example, contain initials. To what extent the core questions were reformulated, shortened, and their language revised cannot be determined without comparing published queries with the originals. It is obvious that the fact-oriented legal Q&A columns differed in many regards from advice-asking and advice-giving in certain other newspaper columns and oral advising.[645]The questions asked ranged widely across various fields of law. However, they tended to relate more generally to private law: land law, laws governing tenants, debt, and life in the countryside (hunting and natural resources). The other main group was related to public law: municipal administration, laws governing elections, duties and rights of local officials, and tax law. In 1909, Lilius answered questions related to general private law, while Stahlberg’s specialty lay in the fields of law of tenancy and public law. In Stahlberg’s book Lakiasioita, a collection of 417 questions and answers, a fourth (26%) dealt with land tenancy, 23% with communal taxation, and a fifth contained communal administration. parliamentary elections, ecclesiastical administration, and land law were the next biggest group in addition to miscellaneous questions.[646] A much smaller percentage of questions were related to family law as a survey conducted in Finland in the mid-1970s demonstrated.[647]
Occasionally, answers were composed of only a yes or no.
For example, when asked whether a farm owner had the right to hire part of his or her farm without the consent of the mortgage holder, R.J. curtly answered “yes” in Tyo. R.J. gave a similar answer to a question on whether a foreign woman marrying a citizen thereby acquired citizenship.[648] Regardless of the length of the answer, the legal information was probably welcome.The readership of a particular newspaper influenced to some extent the type of questions it received. The 25 questions published in the Socialist Tyo in the spring of 1914 generally addressed a wide variety of topics from how to seek patents and the citizenship of married women to the permissibility of using sales assistants in the marketplace and the inspection of private hospitals in the countryside.[649] However, three topics stand out: questions related to land and its use (3), workers and their rights (4), and municipal taxes and duties (6).[650] Thus, it is not surprising that almost a fifth of the questions answered in Tyo in the spring of 1914 dealt with work. This was a higher percentage of work-related questions than, for example, in Helsingin Sanomat. Newspapers made known their special fields of expertise. For example, in 1907, Helsingin Sanomat specifically invited legal queries related to municipal or central administration.[651]
The periodical of the peasant population Pellervo observed that in 1910 the experts answered legal questions related especially to the new Land Tenancy Decree of 1909 (maanvuokra-asetus), road building and maintenance, boundary disputes, and fencing and ditching duties.[652] Stahlberg, who answered questions related to the topic in Peller vo, and Lilius were joint secretaries of the law and economy committee of the Finnish Diet and thus responsible for much of the law drafting. One of these law proposals was for the 1902 Land Tenancy Act (maanvuokralaki), which made Stahlberg one of the country’s top experts of the topic.[653] In Lakiasioita, Stahlberg gave as his reason for writing the book that as so many laymen were involved in legal matters, for example, in communal administration, in committees regulating tenancy (Finn.
vuokralau- takunta), that they could benefit from the collection. The same questions cropped up repeatedly, according to him.[654]Parliamentary reform in the early 1900s was another field which caused new legal problems. In 1906, the four-estate diet was replaced with a modern one-chambered parliament with universal suffrage even for women. The first elections were organised in March 1907. Thus, the reform and how elections were to be organised could and did cause practical problems that Stahlberg addressed in his answers in 1909 and later in his book. In fact, several questions in the book mention the 1909 or 1910 elections, suggesting that the advice was specifically requested for such elections, and making the expert’s answers all the more topical.
As expected, newspapers and periodicals focused on answering questions that were relevant for their readership. Consequently, the American Chicago Defender addressed queries largely connected to urban Black life, the Finnish Pellervo rural questions and Opettajain Lehti teaching- and school-related legal questions.[655] However, that Helsingin Sanomat, a newspaper situated in the capital, largely answered questions dealing with rural administration, taxation, elections, and tenancy can be interpreted as a conscious effort to reach out to the countryside and provincial readers. Thereby, it successfully and rapidly increased its circulation.