381 political system’s supporters obtained satisfaction by sometimes seeing their values reflected in, inter alia, the legal application by the Supreme Court and that social critics had some reason to observe a more sensible use of language than they would otherwise have had reason to do. A further result of this legislation was that the grouping of opinions against which these penal provisions were applied was stigmatized, as they were pointed out as specifically antisocial through the action taken by the legal institutions. The descriptions of offences examined by this work were politically neutral in the legal theoretical sense. Nevertheless, a large number of the cases appealed to the Supreme Court concerned socialist propaganda. This can to a certain extent probably be explained as it was primarily cases involvingcontroversial political evaluations which were pursued to the highest level of appeal. Above all else, the over-representation of socialist propaganda among the cases appealed to the Supreme Court resulted from the fact that the more precise meaning of the penal provisions - as a consequence of the ambiguity of the description of the crime - was determined on the basis of, inter alia, what was assumed to be the so-called generally predominant and acceptable values of society. Thus there is reason to assume that it was primarily persons holding socialist sympathies (that is, those that were at that time regarded as politically incorrect and inopportune) who expressed themselves in a manner conflicting with the norms as they were interpreted on the basis of, inter alia, the view of society then prevailing. In my opinion, it is not likely that the legal system consciously supported the ruling political systemagainst oppositional groupings in the conflict which preceded the breakthrough of democracy. Various theories may be presented concerning the social context in which the administration of justice examined by this work took place. It may, for example, be considered probable that persons prosecuted in cases were spokesmen for that part of the population which did not have any right to vote and which therefore, by reason of the constitutional circumstances, did not have any opportunity to be heard within the framework of the political system. However, in my opinion, it is more probable that the majority of the persons who were sentenced during the period of the emergence of democracy for contravening rules restricting freedom of political speech where spokesmen for the small minority of the population who wanted society to be radically reformed by a marxist, syndicalistic or anarchistic revolution. As these persons often agitated comparatively fiercely in social discussion and debate, it is rather natural that they unusually often came into conflict with the penal law norms examined by this study.
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