247 en renodlad prejudikatinstans, vilket haft till följd att de grundläggande förvaltningsrättsliga kraven på legalitet och likhet i vissa fall hos de lägre instanserna inte tillgodosetts i den utsträckning somvarit önskvärd. Sedan FÖD:s tillkomst 1979 har dock högsta domsmakten på socialförsäkringsområdet i hög grad bidragit till en kvalitativ förbättring av rättstillämpningen, vilket inneburit påtagliga fördelar för den enskilde försäkrade. Summary The Supreme Court and social welfare law The Swedish courts can be divided into two branches; the general, or ordinary, courts: district and appeal courts and the Supreme Court, and the administrative courts: county courts, appeal courts and the Supreme Administrative Court {Regeringsrätten), as well as the Social Insurance Court and the Social Insurance Appeal Court {Försäkringsöverdomstolen). In addition, there are a number of different special courts. Roughly speaking it can be said that main purpose of the ordinary courts is to hear criminal cases and to decide disputes between individuals, whereas the administrative courts hear cases between individuals on the one hand, and a public authority, state or local, on the other. The Supreme AdministrativeCourt was established in 1909. It gradually developed to the point where it only accepted cases which were of importance as precedents. This feature of the Supreme Administrative Court was retained in the major reform of Swedish administrative law which occured at the beginning of the 1970’s. This is not the case with the Social Insurance Appeal Court, established under the name of the Social Insurance Court in 1961, which is the final court of appeal in social insurance cases. This court also allows appeals from the local social insurance offices on the basis of mistake of law or fact. The national administrative body, the National Social Insurance Board {Riksförsäkringsverket, RFV), originally had a double roll, serving both as the body responsible for supervising the application of the social insurance legislation by local social insurance authorities and of hearing appeals from decisions taken by these authorities. As a result of the administrative reforms of January 1979, the social insurance courts were entrusted with the appeal function and RFV retained its supervisory roll, as well as the right to appeal to the government decisions taken by the local social insurance offices and judgments of the Social Insurance Court. This reform has led to a major strengthening of judicial review of the application of social insurance law. The norms of the social welfare law systemdiverge in many important respects from the norms of the private law system. The function of the former is not to facilitate the resolution of conflicts between individuals but to facilitate the division of resources between different groups of citizens. In addition the social welfare law systemis in a state of constant change and this requires a very high degree of flexibility, e.g. in a situation of diminished financial resources. The legal rules in the area are characterised by the fact that they tend to establish outer boundaries of permissible activity for the authorities and agencies involved in applying them, leaving scope for a variety of different means of rule making. This technique is connected to the changed function of the legal system, with the transition fromjudicial (adjudicative) forms of decision making to more goal based forms of decision making. Analyses made during the 1970’s and 1980’s of how such legal rules were applied by authorities and agencies show clearly the need for a precedent creating function to guide decision making in large parts of social welfare law.
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