english summary 1075 and also decided to let its new interpretation of the law reach back to the ECtHRjudgment in the Zolotukhin case of 2009. The Finnish Supreme Court (Högsta domstolen) has in a similar way given effect to this prohibition in Finnish law and related it to the principle of fair trial in the Finnish constitution. The Norwegian Supreme Court has in 2010, in a controversial case where it was disputed whether a tax statute was an ex post facto law, applied its own interpretation of the constitution rather than following that of the legislator. The court, which found the contravention of the constitution clear, thought it had no reason to consider the attempt of the legislator to interpret the Constitution. In 2012, the Danish Supreme Court held that the state had interfered with the liberty of movement within a state’s territory according to the ECHRin a way that was disproportionate. Thus, the critical attitude of judges, as regards the compatibility of statutes with national constitutions and theECHR, is accelerating. The aim of the dissertation is – against this background – to analyze the tension between, on the one hand, the practice of constitutional critical judging and, on the other, the practice of loyalty of judges to the legislator. The analysis covers the Nordic legal orders during the last 200 years. The point of departure is the constitutional changes that occurred in the Nordic countries in the first half of the 19th Century: In 1809, a new constitution (instrument of government) was adopted in Sweden, and the emperor of Russia accepted that the old Swedish constitutional laws continued to be valid in his newly acceded grand duchy of Finland. In 1814, a constitution was adopted in the newly created kingdom of Norway, and in 1849 a constitution was adopted in Denmark to replace the absolutistic form of government. The dissertation is within the field of comparative legal history. The tension between the practices of constitutional critical judging and of loyalty of judges to the legislator suggests that judges, over time and in different jurisdictions, but also simultaneously in the same legal system, may have different attitudes towards their task. Similarly, other actors have different views on which attitudes the judges should have. The way recent changes have occurred suggests that examining these attitudes in a longer temporal context would be helpful in analyzing and explaining them. Law can be described as being divided into layers. A frequently used metaphor is that law is like an ocean. In the surface layer, where the waves of change are rapid, is the daily business of law: statutes and regulations, Theory and Method
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