Law of Sweden

The law of Sweden is a civil law system, whose essence is manifested in its dependence on statutory law.^[2] Sweden's civil law tradition, as in the rest of Europe, is founded upon Roman law as codified in the Corpus Juris Civilis, but as developed within German law, rather than upon the Napoleonic Code. But, over time Sweden along with the other Scandinavian countries have deviated significantly from their classical Roman and German models. Instead, the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark) together with Finland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Åland (self-governing) and Iceland may be said to have a special "Nordic" version of jurisprudence that is neither a truly civil law system nor a part of the British-derived common law legal system.^[3]

Before reception of Roman-Germanic law, the Nordic countries had a deep common law tradition of their own, including juries (tolvmän, lit. 'twelve men') delivering verdicts with a jurist as a chairman, general deliberative assemblies (ting) under a lawspeaker (lagman), and rigidly fixed rules for the conditions of the kingship, which before 1544 was elected. Contemporary features deviating from general civil law systems include no codified constitution, no civil code, and significant dependence on case law; allotment under Swedish bankruptcy law, for instance, relies heavily on a precedent case from 1982, rather than statute.^[4] Contract law is also largely non-codified or non-binding, with significant leeway given to parties, except for conditions of consumer protection. Juries of a kind are still used in both civil and criminal cases – particularly in the district courts – although their appointment is nowadays a party political matter, with political judges (nämndemän) who are thus neither selected by lot, nor professional judges.^[5]