Aulic Council
The Aulic Council was entitled to delegate its authority to an "imperial commission". Such a commission could be tasked to deal with all subject matter for which the Aulic Council itself was responsible. In about three quarters of all cases, the Council did this at the request of one of the parties in a case before the Council. To what extent the Council used commissions has not yet been exhaustively researched. This is partly due to the fact that Council would often delegate organizational matters to an imperial commission, such as regulating an inheritance of guardianship. Only a small subset of the imperial commissions were used to resolve legal disputes. During the reign of Emperor Ferdinand III, 650 such commissions were documented. In over 70 cases, the Council rejected a request to create an imperial commission.