c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 339 the employer’s right to freely dismiss workers. Furthermore, the right to form associations was considered as a natural, hidden term of the collective agreements. In the light of the previous long series of natural law references, the labour court’s method of finding implicit terms in labour contracts in order to extend the peace obligation is hardly surprising. This lawmaking of the labour court around 1930 was the last link in a long chain of shifts during the formative period of Swedish labour law, during which the state had gradually changed its position on labour relations.The Freedom of Trade Act in 1864 and the abolishment of theVagrancy Act in1885 had opened up for the possibility for free negotiations between the parties and contained no sanctions for labour stoppages. Less than 50 years later, the position had shifted fromlaissez-faire via interventionism to corporatism.The legal instruments had moved from the masterservant rules being partly within the public law to a position purely of private law, of damages, cancellation, dismissal, mandatory arbitration and an extended obligation for industrial peace through the court’s interpolation of hidden terms in the legally binding collective agreements. By the end of the formative period of Swedish labour law, courts and judges had got a stronger position. Conflicts of interests had been transformed into legal conflicts, a scenario that had been predicted in the parliamentary debate in 1928 by several Social Democratic opponents. In this process of “juridification”, the relationship between the state and collectivist bodies on the labour market appears as one of the most decisive factors. The collectivisation of labour relations initially meant a sharpening of the conflict between employers and workers. However, at the same time it opened a new way for normative regulation which could promote peace on the labour market.As Niklas Bruun and 11. 5 juridi f icat ion, integ rat ion and subordinat ion
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