Kommunal normgivning

Sammanfattning: The Swedish Instrument of Government is based on the precept that the people, through the Parliament, possess the entire competence to issue legal norms. In Sweden's pre-eminent laws - its four constitutions - the Parliament has decided to what extent other public organs than itself can be entrusted to issue legal norms. Besides the Parliament itself, only the Government has a competence based directly on the Instrument of Government to issue legal norms. Through specific entitlements for the Parliament and the Government to delegate portions of this competence, even national authorities and local governments (kommuner) can be entrusted with a norm-making power. The subject of this book is the norm-making power of local government.Local government norm-making is addressed from several perspectives. Of central importance is of course the constitutional regime. Besides examining the subject matter that can be made the basis of delegation and the procedure by which the transfer of competence has to take place, much attention is devoted to the question of how normative decisions are to be distinguished from decisions in the individual case. In conjunction with these constitutional issues, it is examined which local government organ(s) can be given the power to issue various types of legal provisions and how various local government subjects under the Local Government Act and the Administrative Law Act as well as various specific statutes shall handle that power. Issues addressed in that context include how norm-making disputes can be brought before the courts, to what extent parties outside the local government must be heard before norm-making decisions can be made and how the adopted provisions shall be brought to the public's attention. Both decisions between various norm-making subject areas and between various decision-makers are addressed. In that connection, various statutory amendments are proposed, e.g., concerning how local government provisions shall be published.In addition, the dissertation examines what options the state has to check how local government units are using their competence to issue legal provisions. Additional questions addressed are under what conditions individuals can obtain exemption from local government provisions and what sanctions can be used to compel compliance with such provisions. In this context, the dissertation identifies the differences existing between various areas for local government norm-making and it is examined whether such differences are justified.