summary Council were referred to as administrative courts and could be compared with the independent administrative administration of justice on the European continent. However, and this was an important point for Herlitz, they belonged to public administration in terms of organisation. General courts should largely be kept out as he considered that the legal quality of the Swedish exercise of official authority was good. Herlitz’ enunciation about the excellence of Swedish public administrationwas opposed by several of his Swedish andNordic colleagues, who wanted to give more power to the courts. In around 1940 Herlitz himself came to moderate his positive opinion of the advantages of the Swedish administrative model. Three factors played a role. First, as a reaction to the plans to introduce a new Code of Judicial Procedure, Herlitz proposed amotion in the Riksdag in 1942, proposing that the Swedish administrative procedure should be regulated through legislation that would as far as possible ensure ‘a proper and fair ruling’. Much later, from the 1970s, his initiative would culminate in the Administrative Procedure Act, the Administrative Court Procedure Act and the Administrative Court Act. Second, his international orientation was extreme and he had built up an extensive network in the Nordic countries, the rest of Europe, the United States and other parts of the world. His writings were rich with references to foreign authors. Like Reuterskiöld and Sundberg he noted the internationalisation of law and its significance to the rapid transformation of Swedish society. However, Herlitz had serious concerns about the ‘threat from the East’ since his youth. This involves close contacts with Germany, which was common among Swedish university graduates. This relationship was put to the test after Machtübernahme in 1933, during the period of the Nazi regime and the Second World War. Although Herlitz maintained his contacts, he clearly indicated, both in his contacts with German colleagues who had affiliated themselves to Nazism and publicly in the Swedish debate, his aversion to any form of antisemitism and totalitarian tendencies. Third, his belief in the Swedish central powers had weakened. The tenets of his youth included strict adherence to the State. However now, 285
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