The most significant part had a “teleological” character, which encouraged the judge to identify a particular purpose of law. It started from the idea that the labour contract’s purpose was to complete the power of the paying party and arrived at the conclusion that the modern service contract implied those masterservant rules that had an “essential or natural quality, which was derived from the very character of the contract”.The servant’s duty of obedience “must be considered as lying in the nature of the contract”. In 1929 the labour court laid down that the collective agreement must be considered to imply that the worker had an open-ended duty to perform every task which had a “natural” connection to the employer’s enterprise.The method, as well as its indicated purpose, seems to have several points in common withWinroth’s ideas of 1878. Even the choice of words shows a resemblance - “must be considered” (måste anses) was to be one of the labour court’s pet phrases when supporting judicial decisions in politically controversial disputes.608 The teleological method of finding hidden terms and natural principles, however, was not something entirely new that was chiselled out around 1900. Like Bernhard Windscheid, a great father of learning,Winroth and the labour court reached a conclusion, which lies close to Savigny’s theses around 1840.Also in its modern version locatio conductio operarumhad the consequence that the paying party got a far-reaching and open-ended right to make use of the working participant’s services. However, the pure contractual approach and references to hidden natural terms which were founded on established patterns of living, maybe appeared as more compatible to a liberal, democratic society than the previous opinions’ references to divine justice, public law statutes prescribed from above, or incontestable “Urrechten”. Hence, it would be tempting to describe the court’s lawmaking by using Dawson’s characterisation of the energetic brainwork of the German Pandectist scholars during the 19th century: p a r t v, c h a p t e r 1 2 344 608 See for example AD1994:79.
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