Johansen shows how doctrinal scholarship on Swedish administrative law has conceptualized and prioritizedärendehandläggning (casehandling), often at the expense of the broader and messier sphere of administrative practice.35 He therefore argues that the legal form has become increasingly abstract and formal, detaching itself from the administrative reality. Thus, faktisk verksamhet (concrete activity) has been treated as a residual or peripheral category, which, in Johansen’s view, should instead be central.36 Together, these two uses of the archive demonstrate its value not only as a methodological tool but also to critically engage with how certain knowledge takes shape within a legal field, whether through political discourse or doctrinal conceptualization. In contrast to much conventional legal research at Swedish universities, both Johansen and Nääv deliberately choose not to follow the well-trodden “legal-dogmatic” path.37 But both remain close to the legal sources: Johansen constructs his archive from doctrinal writings and legal scholarship; Nääv constructs hers from preparatory works, one of the most canonical legal sources in Swedish law. Neither archive could have been assembled without presupposing some tentative, working concept of law. Such a concept remains implicit but nonetheless decisive: the very act of delimiting an archive requires a sense of what counts as “legal.” Other material could certainly have been chosen – social movements, media debates, economic shifts – yet both 114 constructing the past: legal archives and critique Limitations? 35 Now, Johansen does not attempt to systematically demonstrate in an empirical way that Swedish public law has undergone a structural shift from decision-based legality as the basis for the exercise of power to activity-based exercise of power, in the sense developed by Agamben. Rather, he presupposes – through some tentative cases in the first chapter of the thesis – that the dominant legal understanding of administration, centred on decisions and case handling, misrepresents the important modalities of governance. 36 Johansen, Förvaltning som verksamhet: bidrag till offentligrättens allmänna läror (above, note 10), p. 76: “The legal machinery, or the administrative apparatus, is entirely primary in relation to the law. Administrative activity is not primarily about applying the law. It is the activity that constitutes the law, not the other way around.” My translation. 37 Ibid, p. 98; Nääv, (O)likabehandling. Likabehandling och jämlikhetsförbättrande åtgärder i den svenska diskrimineringslagstiftningens genealogi (above, note 10), p. 23–4: “This is not a legaldogmatic [rättsdogmatisk] study in the sense that I assume it is possible to construct a correct legal answer to the questions at hand by studying what is often referred to as the sources of law.” My translation.
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