collapse of the Soviet union in the 1990s – used the German Basic law as a model. It also resulted in an evaluation of the constitutional principles and their history. Another important example was the post-colonial Mandela constitution in South Africa, which took effect in 1997. It stated that the colonial legal systems – Dutch civil law and the British court system – should be upheld, but the customary law of the thirteen indigenous tribes were also guaranteed. South African customary law experienced a renaissance and were observed in quite a new way. Customary law as a source for the indigenous people became globally important – for the Aboriginal Australians, the Indians in Canada, the Inuits in Greenland and the Sami populations in the Nordic Countries.28 This represents another example of turn to history. Since the 1970s the Sami Villages have sued the Swedish state regarding the possession and ownership of their historical land. In case after case the Sami struggled in the courts – but lost. The customary law which in the post-war positivistic era was established only by the confirmation of the parliament, was not regarded as evidence. Today, however, the Sami have got a much stronger position not only in the courts but also in legal scholarship. The Swedish Supreme Court’s decision in the 2020 Girjas case demonstrates this. In its ruling, the Supreme Court concluded that the Reindeer Husbandry Act does not give Sami districts the right to grant hunting and fishing rights for the area in which the Sami district conducts reindeer husbandry; and the Sami district Girjas retains the sole right to grant hunting and fishing rights as a result of historical circumstances applying to the area in question (possession since time immemorial).Avery controversial decision demonstrating the conflict between the legal scholars and the judiciaries on one hand and the politicians and the Swedish parliament on the other. Comparative constitutional legal history has also been demonstrated by the current professor of legal history at Lund University, Martin Sunnqvist, who in his impressive work on the history of judicial review in the Nordic countries during two centuries has described the 131 kjell å modéer 28 Kjell Å Modéer, “Sami Law in Late Modern Legal Contexts”, in Christina Allard & Susann Funderud Skogvang, Indigenlous Rights in Scandinavia: Autonomous Sami Law, Farnham2015.
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