1950s to 1970s, when Swedish modernist ideology and the welfare state reached its peak.1 There is a strong idea that the state of the law should primarily be expressed through detailed provisions in fundamental laws and ordinary legislation.2 In such a legal system, the scope for considering historical or societal contexts is arguably limited. If you look closer, however, there is also a strong element of historical continuity in Swedish public law.3 In this essay I will consider the evident tension in constitutional lawbetween the modernist paradigm and the historical structures, and thus its bearing on the role of legal history in contemporary Swedish public law. I take as an example the somewhat elusive role of the king – wedishpublic law may at first glance seem a very modern system. It is based on the constitutional and administrative reforms of the S part iii • contemporary legal history 167 10. The ghost of the king: Traces of ‘Royal Majesty’ in the Swedish constitution of 1974 Henrik Wenander 1 Patrik Hall, ‘The Swedish Administrative Model’, in Jon Pierre (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Swedish Politics (Oxford:OUP, 2015), 299. 2 Thomas Bull, ‘Konstitutionella snedsteg: En studie av svensk trohet mot grundlag’, in Eivind Smith & Olof Petersson (eds.), Konstitutionell demokrati (Stockholm:SNS, 2004), 72, quoting Bertil Fiskesjö, a politician with long experience of constitutional matters, on the need for the constitution to remain ‘fresh’ so that the written text can be applied as it stands without complex constitutional doctrines. 3 For administrative court procedure, see Henrik Wenander, ‘Geschichte der Verwaltungsgerichtsbarkeit in Schweden’, in Karl-Peter Sommermann & Bert Schaffarzik (eds.), Handbuch der Geschichte der Verwaltungsgerichtsbarkeit in Deutschland und Europa(Berlin: Springer, 2019), 1166.
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