248 In the area of social services, with the exception of the laws relating to the taking into care of children, chronic alchoholics and drug addicts where judgments are few, the Supreme Administrative Court has delivered a relatively large number of judgments. The ambiguous and vague wording of section 6 of the Law on Social Services (1980) dealing with the individual’s right to social assistance has been defined and clarified to a certain extent. The Supreme Administrative Court’s application of the paragraph cannot, however, be said to be restrictive even in the light of the extensive possible scope of the provision. Thus, it is doubtful whether the Court’s interpretative case law has really been necessary. The text of the law itself and the explanatory travaux préparatoires make it clear that the individual has considerable rights to social assistance in different situations, and the Court’s judgments have simply confirmed this. What has been said above on the Supreme Administrative Court’s case law probably also applies to the case law of the Social Insurance Appeal Court which is the supreme judicial power in the area of social insurance. An example which can be mentioned here is its extensive application of the law on insurance for injuries at work. Acharacteristic of the case law of this court is the endeavours that are made to interpret the law to the maximum benefit of the individual insured. Nonetheless, the fact that the Social Insurance Appeal Court still permits ändringsdispens (see Bengtsson’s paper) has often resuited in it not laying down useful precedents on points of law. This has had the consequence that the fundamental requirements of administrative law of acting within the spirit of the law and of treating like cases alike have not always been fully met in the lower courts. Nonetheless, since the Social Insurance Appeal Court came into being in 1979, it, together with the Supreme Administrative Court, has significantly improved the quality of the application of the law by the lower courts in the area of social welfare law, which has resulted in tangible benefits for the individual.
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