employer with an extensive right of direction. The court also used this reference in several decisions during the first years of the 1930s, to support that the workers had a right to organise and belong to a trade union. Many Swedish legal writers after the SecondWorldWar have questioned the labour court’s decisions of 1929-34on the grounds that they did not refer to any accepted legal sources but rested solely on the court’s own formulated general legal principles about what terms that must be considered as “natural” in working life. Our study of the arguments in the Swedish parliament, the public debate and among legal scholars shows that these kinds of vague references to “natural law” were quite a common feature before the court started its activity in 1929. A selection of patterns of life was considered as natural or at least necessary for maintaining an efficient enterprise and the common good. At the same time, the study of the formative period of 1885-1930 shows that the labour movement’s representatives strongly questioned these natural terms as not reflecting generally accepted customs on the labour market or not being supported among the workers concerned. In the light of these profound disagreements, the employers’ numerous references to “nature” must be considered as being less founded on already firmly and accepted established patterns of living than on legal political desires about an effective and competetive organisation of labour relations. They reflected a pretension to the preferential right of interpretation how to best promote the common good.The references to natural rights appear as efforts to create a theoretical justification of the employers’ interest (Sw. intresseståndpunkt). One is tempted to agree with Stig Strömholm’s opinion, that the references to the nature of things often appear to be used when “all other arguments are gone”.604 p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 1 0 324 604 “…detta är det argument man tar till när alla andra tryter”. Strömholm1984, pp. 347348.
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