The emperor, even when the imperial authority was at the lowest, was regarded in Germany as the fountain of judicial authority. The right of passing capital sentence in particular was considered to emanate either mediately or immediately from him. The Fehm-courts were conspicuous for their readiness to acknowledge him as the source of their authority, and all their decrees were pronounced in his name. As superior lord and judge of all the counts and tribunals, the emperor had a right of inspection and reformation over them. He could summon and preside in a general chapter; he might enter any court; and the presiding count was obliged to give way and allow him to preside in his stead. He had the power to make new schöppen, provided he did so on Westphalian soil. Every schöppe was moreover bound to give a true answer to the emperor when he asked whether such a one was _forfehmed_ or not, and in what court. He could also depose disobedient counts, but only in Westphalia. The emperor could even withdraw a cause out of the hands of the tribunals. The right of appeal to him has been already noticed; but, besides this, he had a power of forbidding the count to proceed in the cause when the accused offered himself to him _for honour and right_; and it was at his own risk then that the count proceeded any further in the business. The emperor could also grant a safe-conduct to any person who might apply for it under apprehension of having been _forfehmed_, which safe-conduct the schöppen dared not violate. Even when a person had been _forfehmed_, the emperor could save him by issuing his command to stay execution of the sentence for a hundred years, six weeks, and a day. It is plain, that, to be able to exercise these rights, the emperor must be himself _initiated_, for otherwise he could not, for instance, appear where a court was sitting, make alterations in laws with which, if _ignorant_, he must necessarily be unacquainted, or extend mercy when he could not know who was _forfehmed_ or not. In the laws establishing the rights of the emperor it was therefore always inserted, _provided he be initiated_, and the acts of uninitiated emperors were by the Fehm-courts frequently declared invalid. The emperor had, therefore, his choice of setting a substitute over the Fehm-courts, or of being himself initiated. The latter course was naturally preferred, and each emperor, at his coronation at Aix-la-Chapelle, was initiated by the hereditary Count of Dortmund. Though Aix-la-Chapelle was not in Westphalia, the law sanctioned this departure from the general rule that frei-schöppen should only be made in that country.