important position adopted by the Court concerning the relationship of the legislator vis-à-vis citizens, and even more importantly, on the role played by judges and lawyers as intermediaries between legislator and citizens in their capacities of statutory interpreters.This, however, will be discussed in the final part of this essay. There is a possible third reason why the Court may have considered that the Swedish tradition of applying legislative history as a legislative technique and in statutory interpretation was acceptable. This is less related to this case and its specific circumstances than to a general historical development, which I believe is characteristic of the status of legislative history as a source of law today, and more specifically for the development of a gap between legal theory and law in real life. It has been suggested that the Commission acted more or less in accordance with a dominant trend in modern legal theory - that is, a fundamental mistrust of legislative history as a source of law.At the same time nobody would perhaps deny the basic fact that legislative history is inevitably produced in any legislative process, and that it is at least a potential source of information for judges and lawyers in any legal order. As for EU law, legislative history has never been recognised officially as a source of law.However, the European Court of Justice does on occasion apply EU legislative history when interpreting EU law acts. Moreover, the development in this field seems to be that legislative history is actually on its way to becoming a more important source of information than before.As in other legal orders there is a disturbing lack of research in this field, but at least one investigation of ECJ case law suggests that legislative history is, in fact, made use of more often today than previously.18 This development could have played an important part in determining the outcome of the case of the Commission v. Sweden. If the Court today uses legislative history to a greater extent than, for instance, two or three decades ago it is reasonable to assume that it would show greater sympathy towards a member state re cht swi s s e n scha f t al s j ur i st i sch e dok t r i n 204 18 “There are reasons to believe that the importance of preparatory work for Community court litigation will continue to grow in the near and medium-term future.”, S. Schønberg, K. Frick, Finishing, refining, polishing: on the use of travaux préparatoires as an aid to the interpretation of Community legislation, European Law Review, vol. 28 no. 2(2003) p. 170; “The use of legislative history as a source of interpretation in Community law is ... likely to increase.”, U. Öberg, Tre lösa trådar: mer om förarbeten, statens processföring vid EG-domstolen och det gemenskapsrättsliga uppenbarhetsrekvisitet, Svensk Juristtidning 2003, p. 507.
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