Assembly) to legislate became evident.Of particular interest is the opinion of one leading representative, Peter Motzfeldt (1777-1854).13 Although the people had the right, he said, to legislate through the Storting, he expressed a general doubt about the ability of representatives of the people to understand the profession of legislating. In particular he was sceptical to give the Storting the task of making a new Civil Code as prescribed by the Article 94 of the new Constitution. After such a code had been drafted by legal experts, he would only allow the Storting the formal competence to revise the draft, and not subject it to normal legislative acts, as the Storting was not fit for such an important task. This proposal did not have much effect.And the NorwegianStorting carried out its legislation without much hesitation; however, as in so many of the early 19th century liberal parliaments, the Storting was crowded with lawyers and law professors, who gave a certain expert legitimacy to the business of legislation.Thus ideas of the legal professionalization and that of popular sovereignty merged to some extend on the basis of the latter.Among the most prominent members of the Norwegian Storting was the law professor Anton Martin Schweigaard (1808-1870). He had actively been carrying through his policies with the authority of a law professor, albeit more regarding the content of law than regarding formal aspects of legislation.This prompted criticism. At Schweigaard’s death in 1870 the radical critic, author and lawyer Aasmund OlavssonVinje (1818-1870) wrote a penetrating analysis of him both as law professor and as member of the Storting through 30 years.14 Vinje had – he said – expected the Great Lawyers’ role in a Parliament to be a guardian of consistency and principles in law, confronted as Schweigaard must have been with the mass of casuistic legislation. He ought to have acted as “a Police chief of legal science” in Parliament. On this Schweigaard had failed,Vinje argued, as he had not managed to structure his legal-political activities in a systematic way. Schweigaard had paid greater attention to the political than to the scientific part of his task in Parliament.This observation ledVinje to express a general scepticism to the ability of democratically legislative assemblies to produce system and order in their own legislation. re cht swi s s e n scha f t al s j ur i st i sch e dok t r i n 184 13 Peter Motzfeldt, ”Betænkning om Udøvelsen af den lovgivende Magt” i: Riksforsamlingens ForhandlingerVol. I (Kristiania 1914) pp. 223-226 (p. 225). 14 Vinje, Om Schweigaard (Kristiania 1870).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=