Konstitutionellt kritiskt dömande. Förändringen av nordiska domares attityder under två sekel

Sammanfattning: In recent years, the supreme courts in the Nordic countries have set aside statutes as contrary to the constitution of the country or to the ECHR. A much debated question is whether the courts have gone too far – or if they have waited too long to take on this task. In this dissertation, the task of Nordic judges to critically examine the compatibility of legislation with constitutional norms is put in its historical context. With the help of a comparative legal historical method, the relationship between the judiciary and the other two branches of government, and between the constitutions and the other types of norms, is analyzed. The analysis takes as its point of departure the constitutional changes that took place in the Nordic countries in 1809, 1814 and 1849. The task of judges to review whether legislation is consistent with constitutional norms is in this dissertation called constitutional critical judging. The focus is on how the attitudes of judges toward this task have changed over the past two centuries. The arguments now supporting constitutional critical judging have been put forward in the legal discussion in all the Nordic countries since the early 19th century. The effect of these arguments has varied between the different countries and between different time periods. Now that constitutional norms are not to be interpreted only by the national legislator, but also by international bodies, the judges have gained a new position: The constitutional norms are materialized in the courts.