174 An examination of the contemporary academic legal writing and political debates comes to similar conclusions. During the 1860’s a number of Norwegian lawyers, inter alia Aschehoug, Aubert, Winter Hjelm and P. C. Lasson, expressed the view that the Supreme Court had such a power. Furthermore, during the 1860’s there was considerable opposition to the doctrine from the political left, led by Johan Svedrup, which attempted to limit the expansion of the competence of the Supreme Court in an area which they considered should be reserved for Parliament and Government. This political opposition provides cogent evidence of the strong position the doctrine of judicial reviewalready occupied at that time. Thus, the appearance of the doctrine of judicial review in Norwegian constitutional law cannot be directly linked to the arrival of parliamentary democracy, and therefore 1884 should not be regarded as the key year in the history of the doctrine in Norway. To regard judicial review as a consequence of parliamentary democracy is a mistake, a kind of political reductionism which pays insufficient regard to the autonomous development of the doctrine. If a time period must be given for the emergence of the doctrine then this must be assigned to the 1850’s and 1860’s. The questions which the present author considers remain to be answered are why the doctrine of judicial reviewobtained such a strong position in Norwegian constitutional law during the 1850’s and 1860’s and, froma European perspective, whv Norway as the first state after the U.S.A. was to implement the doctrine? The final part of the article deals with the historv' of the doctrine in Norway between 1884 and 1920.
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