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UPDATE: Swedish Law and Legal Materials
By Ingrid Kabir and Sofia Sternberg
Published May 2007
See the archive version!
Ingrid Kabir is a law librarian at the law section of Stockholm University Library, the national resource library for law in Sweden. Ingrid coordinates the work of the gateway to Swedish legal resources on the web, called Rättskällan. The Rättskällan project (actually part of a larger gateway) is a collaborative effort of five participating law libraries. Promoting the use of electronic legal resources is very much on Ingrid’s agenda.
Sofia Sternberg is a law librarian at the Law Library in Uppsala, which is part of Uppsala University Library. She has a law degree as well as a master’s degree in library and information science, and has practised in law for five years before becoming a librarian. She is mainly involved in library instruction for students and is also responsible for the library’s European documentation centre.
Table of Contents
The Swedish Legal System – Background
Preparatory Legislative Materials
The Court System and Reports of Cases
The Swedish legal system has its roots in the continental legal tradition with its dependence on statutory law. There was close communication between scholars of Sweden and the European continent in the eighteenth century. This led to a strong influence from the German-Roman tradition of the European continental countries on the Swedish legal system. A comprehensive Swedish code was enacted in 1734. This code, known as The Code of 1734, was divided into the following sections:
This arrangement can still be found in the comprehensive edition of The Law Book (in Swedish Sveriges Rikes Lag) published by Norstedt. As with texts of parliament and government of any country, the texts are available only in the vernacular.
The fundamental laws of Sweden are the following: The Instrument of Government, the Act of Succession, the Freedom of the Press Act and the Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression. The acts which form the Swedish Constitution are available in English at the website of the Swedish Parliament.
Recent developments of Swedish laws are linked to Sweden’s membership in the European Union effective from January 1995. For detailed and in depth information on the Swedish legal system please consult the following title:
There are four main sources of Swedish law: legislation, preparatory legislative materials, case law and literature. The legislation is the primary source, while the other three are used to interpret the law in a specific case. The importance of preparatory documents in interpreting the law is unique for Sweden. However, as the law grows older more importance is attributed to the case law from the supreme courts.
Acts and ordinances are published in The Swedish Code of Statutes since 1825. The Swedish title is “Svensk författningssamling (SFS)”. The statutes are cumulated in annual volumes with a keyword index. An index to statutes in force is published regularly by the title: “Register över gällande SFS-författningar”.
A comprehensive one-volume edition of Swedish laws entitled “Sveriges Rikes Lag” is published annually by Norstedt. Another one-volume set is “Sveriges lagar” published annually by Thomson Fakta.
Swedish legislation translated into English can be found on the website of the Swedish Government.
Some legislation in English is also published in the Ministry publications series (Ds), for example the Swedish Penal Code (Ds 1999:36), the Local Government Act (Ds 2000:72 and Ds 2004:31), the Bankruptcy Act (Ds 1998:41), the Swedish Environmental Code (Ds 2000:61), the Swedish Code of Judicial Procedure (Ds 1998:65) and the Swedish Arbitration Act (Ds 1999:22).
There are also some printed collections of Swedish legislation translated into English, for example Swedish land and cadastral legislation (1998) and Swedish commercial legislation (loose-leaf, Norstedt).
See also Swedish statutes in translation (Ds 2001:7), which contains a list of published translations of Swedish statutes. The translations are mostly in English, but some are also available in other languages. With all translations of Swedish statutes it is important to observe that the translations do not necessarily represent the latest version of the legislation.
To identify the relevant preparatory documents you need to know something about how Swedish laws are made. First a commission of inquiry is appointed by the government, with an instruction on which legal area to investigate. The commission gives a report containing a detailed description of the proposed law, including a background on the current legal situation in this particular area. The report is published in either of the series SOU (Statens Offentliga Utredningar = Swedish Government Official Reports) or Ds (Departementsserien = Ministry Publications Series), depending on the type of commission.
The report is then circulated to concerned parties, for example courts and other public authorities, for comment. After considering the report with comments, the responsible ministry gives a government bill (called proposition), containing the proposed law with a detailed explanatory statement. The parliament (Riksdag) considers this proposal in one of its committees, which gives a report (utskottsbetänkande) with their comments. Finally the law is passed through a vote in parliament.
A summary (in Swedish) of the preparatory documents for a particular law can be found in the law journal Nytt juridiskt arkiv, part II (1876-), which covers a selection of important laws. The Government bill (proposition) is the most important preparatory document when interpreting the law. However, if the parliament has had a different opinion on some point in their report, the government bill is overruled in this part.
Some preparatory documents translated into English can be found on the website of the Swedish Government. Otherwise the preparatory documents are mostly available in Swedish only, although many Government Official Reports (SOU) have a summary in English.
There are 53 judicial districts, each one with a District Court (Tingsrätt). The reports of the district courts are available only at the archive of the district court itself, although a few are available through the subscription service Pointlex. There are six Courts of Appeal (Hovrätt). The Supreme Court (Högsta domstolen, HD) is located in Stockholm. The general courts hear both criminal and civil cases.
There are reporting services of cases from the Courts of Appeal and the Supreme Court. Reports of cases from the Supreme Court are published in the journal: Nytt juridiskt arkiv: Avd. I. The journal has been published by the publisher Norstedt since 1874. Cases from the Supreme Court are also published electronically on the website of the Supreme Court since 2003. A selection of cases from the Courts of Appeal is published in Rättsfall från hovrätterna (RH, 1980-). The latter cases are not considered as precedents, but they can nevertheless be of guidance to the district courts. A general description of the Swedish Judiciary is available in English at the website of the National Courts Administration. There are no official translations of cases from Swedish courts.
There are 23 county administrative courts (Länsrätt). As with the district courts, the reports are available at the archive of the court, or (for a few, selected cases) through the subscription service Pointlex. There are four administrative courts of appeal (Kammarrätt) and one Supreme Administrative Court (Regeringsrätten). There are no longer any official publications for the administrative courts of appeal (although the newer ones are often electronically available). The case law of the Supreme Administrative Court is published in Regeringsrättens årsbok (RÅ).
Besides the general and administrative courts there are also two special courts, the Labour Court (Arbetsdomstolen) and the Market Court (Marknadsdomstolen). They both have their own collections of cases, Arbetsdomstolens domar (1929-) and Marknadsdomstolens avgöranden (1971-).
The most comprehensive printed bibliographies of Swedish legal literature are written by Regner and published by Norstedts Juridik. They are called Svensk juridisk litteratur (= Swedish legal literature), Rättspraxis i litteraturen (= Case law in literature) and Regeringsrättens avgöranden i litteraturen (= The decisions of the Supreme Administrative Court in literature). The first publication contains references to Swedish literature (books and articles) divided into different legal areas. In the other two bibliographies you can search by case number and get references for literature commenting on that specific case.
The major legal publishers are:
In the yearbook Scandinavian Studies in Law, legal scholars present reviews of legal developments within the Scandinavian countries. The recent volumes are devoted to International aspects of Scandinavian law. The yearbook is published under the auspices of The Faculty of Law at Stockholm University and the Stockholm Institute for Scandinavian Law.
Other titles include:
There is an official gateway to all Swedish legal information and its name is “Lagrummet”. From this gateway there are links to legal sources from government, parliament, courts and government agencies.
Full text of the Swedish Code of Statutes is available in the database of the Swedish Parliament called “Dokument. Sveriges riksdag”. This database provides texts of government bills, committee reports, proposals from members of the parliament and minutes of debates. Many guides, fact sheets and explanatory texts are also available. There is an English language version of the web site of the Swedish Parliament, but most of the legal documents are in Swedish.
A selection of Swedish Statutes in Translation of special interest is issued by the Swedish ministries and can be found on the web site of the Swedish Government. The list of translated codes includes The Swedish Penal Code and The Personal Data Act and many more. Fact sheets on Swedish government policy are also included.
Rättsbanken is the oldest publicly available legal database system in Sweden. It is provided by Infotorg which serves as an access point to more than 20 Swedish and some non-Swedish online services. Rättsbanken is a full text database which has texts to statutes, case law, preparatory legislative materials and references to legal literature.
Notisum is the name of another gateway to statutes and case law. A great part of the content is provided free of cost in publicly available archives. A part is only available by subscription. PointLex is a current awareness tool for news and analysis of developments in the field Swedish law. Sveriges Rikes Lag is the name of a legal information system produced by the publisher Norstedts Juridik. It contains full text of statutes, reports of cases, texts analysing and commenting on major codes of law.
ThomsonFakta provides the database Karnov-Plus, which contains case law, government bills and legislation, as well as a general commentary on Swedish statutes called Karnov.