act into the materials of legislative history meant that the Swedish legislator consciously made it more difficult for consumers, as ordinary citizens, to acquire such knowledge. It is not a far-fetched notion to suppose that the Commission took the view that legislative history was an unsuitable instrument for legislation, since ordinary citizens could not be expected to know that reading the law itself was not enough, and even less be expected to know how to consult and interpret the legislative history.This could be considered a perfectly normal application of a general principle of legality. Laws are written and enacted by the people for the people.On what grounds then did the Court accept the Swedish explanation, that the legislative history would automatically be considered in a situation of statutory interpretation? The only possible explanation is that the Court did not consider it to be a problem of great moment that consumers might be unaware of the importance attached to legislative history, in addition to the statute itself, compared with the really serious difficulty with regard to lawyers and judges if they were to forget the materials of legislative history. The question of which sources of law are legitimate is not one that is addressed in everyday life by ordinary citizens. In such situations, where two conflicting interpretations of a law are put to the test, it is the responsibili-ty of a Court of law to resolve it and it involves those with professional training – lawyers and judges. If the principle of legality is applied to the effect that legislative history lacks legitimacy as a tool of interpretation, simply because it is not subject to mandatory promulgation, the same principle should exclude any other source of law applied in such situations - for instance, case law and legal writings. It is an argument that suggests, in the long run, that no machinery of interpretation at all should be applied.The law itself is enough (which, in fact, is what the school of textualism suggests).This point of view recaptures an eighteenth century ideal formulated by Montesquieu, the meaning of which is that statutory interpretation should be nothing more than a mechanical application of law to facts. If we admit, on the contrary, that any application of law also means interpreting that law, and that such operation is performed by a human being, it is more than likely that every possible source will be used to illuminate the meaning of the legal provision, simply because any support from an authoritative source is better than none at all.The principle of legality in this case is a philosophical desire, not a realistic description of the relationship between law and citizens, at least not in situations of re cht swi s s e n scha f t al s j ur i st i sch e dok t r i n 208
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