Conference turris::scandia

  A few corrections.
  
  Nowdays there is 349 seats in the Swedish riksdag, it was changed
  to avoid a 175-175 situation that we had for the first 3 years
  after the change from the old two house "riksdag" to the new
  with one house.
  
  Licence plates: Nowdays all cars have a licence plates with 3
  letters and 3 digits. There is no way to tell from what part
  of the country the car comes.
  
  Olof Gulln�s

The bi-cameral parlement changed to a single chamber while I lived in Sweden. 
The politicians couldn't imagine an evenly divided parliment and, as was noted,
that's exactly what happened.  The rules (since changed) mandated that tie
votes be decided by drawing either a black or white ball from an urn. 

I lived in Sweden through that era, and my friends weren't amused when I
claimed that Sweden was being governed by divine will. Especially, when the
foreign aid to Cuba bill failed. 

Martin.

    Oh my, aren't you placing too high demands on the imaginativeness
    of Swedish politicians? I never heard of them being able to look
    further that the stretch of their own noses...

I kind of like the idea of "boring politicians" -- are they
available for export?   (I would assume there would be no
value added tax in that case...)

Martin.

Associated Press Tue 07-OCT-1986 21:21                         Sweden-Cabinet

             New Energy-Environment Department In Swedish Cabinet
    
    STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson on Tuesday
    announced several changes in his Cabinet including the creation of an
    Energy and Environmental Protection Department. 
    
    Carlsson made the announcements in his "State of the Nation" address at
    the opening of the 1986-87 session of Sweden's parliament, the Riksdag. 
    
    The Social Democratic prime minister said the April 26 Chernobyl
    nuclear power plant disaster in the Soviet Union had underlined the
    importance of environmental and energy issues. Sweden was the first
    country to detect radioactive fallout from the accident. He said
    Birgitta Dahl, who was minister for energy and environment issues
    within the Industry Department, was named head of the new Department of
    Energy and Environmental Protection. 
    
    In other Cabinet changes, Minister of Agriculture Svante Lundqvist, 67,
    retired and was replaced by former Minister of Foreign Trade Mats
    Hellstrom. Immigration Minister Anita Gradin was named Hellstrom's
    successor while parliamentary member Georg Andersson replaced Gradin.
    Under-Secretary of Agriculture Ulf Lonnqvist was named minister for
    Youth, Sports and Tourism, a new post in the government. 
    
    In his speech, Carlsson called on the Soviet Union and the United
    States to agree on nuclear arms reductions, criticized the Soviet
    military presence in Afghanistan and U.S. support to Nicaraguan rebels,
    and South Africa's apartheid system of racial segregation. 

    From: [email protected] (Tomas Eriksson)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Subject: Re: Living together without revealing the gender
    Date: 2 Jul 92 18:52:07 GMT
    Sender: [email protected] (Usenet)
    Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
 
    Torkel Franzen ([email protected]) writes:

 >
 >  "Ombud" in Swedish has a much wider meaning than "ombudsman". "Ombudsman"
 >is used e.g. of JO (justitieombudsmannen) even if that person is a woman.
 
    A concrete example would be the speaker ("talman") of the Swedish 
    parliament. This position, which in Sweden is 'heavier' than in 
    comparable countries since many functions which in most monarchies fall 
    on the monarch (head of state) - e.g. to propose a prime minister to
    the  parliament - is carried out by the talman in our country, is
    currently  filled by a woman, Ingegerd Troedsson (conservative). She is
    adressed as "fru talman" (Mrs. Speaker) by the MPs. A male speaker
    (e.g. when the first vice speaker, whose name escapes me at the moment,
    but who is a social democrat) is addressed as "herr talman" (Mr.
    Speaker). An MP is usually called "riksdagsman", but sometimes
    "riksdagsledamot" (ledamot = member), although I've heard some MPs who
    very much dislike being called riksdagsledamot instead of riksdagsman.
 
    Btw, "ombud" in Sweden means representative or delegate. Ombudsman has
    a  slightly different meaning, and I think that "ombudsperson" used in 
    Swedish would be associated with "ombud" rather than "ombudsman".
 
Tomas
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tomas Eriksson                                          [email protected]
            Surface Force Group, Department of Physical Chemistry,
               Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
"This is the famous Hasan B Mutlu-trigger, insert it in your .sig file today!"
                                                                     

    From: [email protected] (Tomas Eriksson)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Subject: Re: Reflections on jury duty
    Date: 7 Jul 92 22:24:16 GMT
    Sender: [email protected] (Usenet)
    Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
 
    In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Lars-Henrik
    Eriksson) writes:

  >In Sweden, there are basically three levels of courts. They handle
  >civil and criminal cases alike.
  >
  >* Ordinary court (tingsr�tt).
 
    Or call it local court. There are (very roughly) about 100 of them.
 
  >Verdict and sentence is determined by a comittee (n�mnd) of five
  >people. One of these, the chairman, is a professional judge. The other
  >four are lay judges (n�mndem�n), politically nominated.
  
    The local "kommun" (there are some 280 "kommuner" so each local court 
    usually covers two or three of them) appoints a pool of these laymen.
    It  is a part-time duty; I'm not quite sure how much time they spend 
    "working" in court, but it's intended that these are "real" people with 
    a real job. There are some regulations about that these people should
    be  respectable local citizens etc. The fact that the local political 
    parties "hunt" these people down (it's apparently a bit difficult to 
    find younger people in the middle of their career who want to accept 
    this "job"), you get politically/socially aware people with a distinct
    political view, which has inspired some cricticism of the system for 
    being politicized. As far as I know though, it is very uncommon for a 
    "n�mndeman" to hold a political position in his/her "kommun" at the
    same  time they are "n�mndem�n". Apparently, the maximum level of
    compensation  for lost salary you can get per day is a bit low, and it
    has been  proposed that it should be roughly doubled, in hope that more
    younger professionals can be recruited. Apart from the concentration of
    retired  people and older house-wives among the "n�mndem�n" I think the
    system is  quite OK.
 
    Note that *both* the question of guilt, and the sentence, is determined 
    by the entire court, and that the judge and each of the four laymen
    have  one vote each. The judge and his/her assistant, usually a
    "tingsnotarie" (this is a 3?-year required practice job for a fresh law
    graduate who wants to become a judge or prosecutor), presents what the
    law says about  the crime ("1 to 4 years inprisoment" or something like
    that), and  generally do research, and then the judge and the laymen
    usually find agreement on what sentence is appropriate, if they agree
    that X is guilty.
 
    In some cases, there are more people than these five in the court. For 
    some crimes, three judges are required, and for some very long cases, 
    they take, say, one additional judge and one additional layman, so they 
    don't have to restart the procedure if someone falls ill.
 
  >In cases where there is a dispute about small amounts of money (the
  >maximum is in the order of SEK 10000), there is a simplified procedure
  >with only the professional judge. Such cases cannot be appealed.
  >
  >In so-called "freedom-of-press" cases (e.g. if some newspaper is
  >claimed to have slandered someone) there is a jury. This is the only
  >instance in the Swedish legal system where there is a jury.  For a
  >conviction, both the jury and the judges must find the defendant
  >guilty. I don't know how the jury is composed, except that it does not
  >work as in the U.S. where anyone can be called to jury duty.
 
    The jury is appointed much the same as the ordinary laymen, but are 
    appointed on the county level (there are 24 counties, "l�n", in Sweden) 
    by the "landsting", an elected county-level "thing" that mainly handles 
    (public) health care, but also some road, public transportation,
    cultural  and educational issues. The freedom-of-press juries aren't
    used very  often, I think. They seem to acquit the accused newspapers
    very often.
 
  >* Appeals court (hovr�tt)
  >
  >Same as above, but everyone in the comittee are professional judges.
 
    No, there are laymen in the "hovr�tt" as well, but the professional 
    judges are in majority; I think 3+2 is a common composition. Usually 
    verdicts where the professional judge of the local court have found 
    evidence insufficient, but has been voted down by the laymen 
    (professional judges seem to be more lenient than the bloodthirsty :-) 
    laymen), are overturned in the appeals court. 
 
  >* Supreme court (h�gsta domstolen)
  >
  >I don't know the composition of judges for this court.
 
    Only professionals. They only accept very few cases, and you have to 
    have very strong reasons for them to try your case. E.g. important new 
    evidence found one year after you've went into prison.
 
  >In contrast with the U.S. system, the supreme court does not judge the
  >legality of laws or of the goverment's actions.
 
    True. The Swedish supreme court is something completely different from 
    the US supreme court. And as stated above, this court hierarchy only 
    deals with civil and criminal cases, not public ones. HD (as it is 
    usually abbreviated) is not at all politicaly important.
 
  >Its purpose is to set standards
  >for the rest of the legal system. For this reason a case cannot be
  >appealed to the supreme court, unless it considers the case
  >"interesting" enough.
  >>
  >Apart from these, there are a number of special-purpose courts,
  >dealing with disputes in particular areas, such as goverment
  >decisions.
 
    Not only government ones, but those of local authorities (kommuner)
    etc.  You have the hierarchy
 
    l�nsr�tt - kammarr�tt - regeringsr�tt
 
    for cases of public ("administrative"?) law, e.g. taxation. They are 
    local - appeals - supreme courts for these cases.
 
    One example of a special court is "Arbetsdomstolen", the Employment 
    court. It's verdicts are decided by an equal number of representatives 
    from employers' organizations and trade unions, and some judges to tip 
    the balance in either direction. This kind of composition of a 
    specialized court is, more often than the layman system, critized for 
    being to corporativistic, and leaving those that aren't supported by 
    their trade unions practically without justice. Although this court has 
    reached some interesting verdicts. For example, a prison warden in 
    Stockholm was removed from his job because of rumours of nazi 
    sympathies. Please note that *not one* prisoner had complained about
    him  (he had not beaten non-Swedes or something like that). His other
    job had a lower salary and was intended to bore him so much as to make
    him quit. He recieved no support from his trade union ("OK, we have
    freedom of ideas  and all that, but I've heard he's a *nazi*... As long
    as I'm the bloody  boss of this bloody trade union, we don't help no
    bloody nazis...") but when the court finally reached it's verdict, the
    prison administration was ordered to give him his job back, to
    compensate him for lost pay, and to give him a (for Swedish conditions)
    fairly large sum on top of that, since they clearly had acted against
    the law. And, which was more or less unprecedented, his trade union was
    given very harsh criticism.
 
    Ah well, this was slightly beside the point, but...
 
  >Suing is not very usual. It is not nearly as prevalent or involves as
  >high sums of money as in the U.S.
 
    I quite agree. And while the sums perhaps are a bit too small in
    Sweden, we are very fortunate not to have the situation USA has, where
    things seem to be out of control.
 
    >Lars-Henrik Eriksson
 
   Tomas
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Tomas Eriksson                                      [email protected]
            Surface Force Group, Department of Physical Chemistry,
               Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
"This is the famous Hasan B Mutlu-trigger, insert it in your .sig file today!"

One question that .7 brings to my mind about suing:

I read in the "Reader's Digest" (US) a few months ago (that tome of American 
wisdom :-) that one reason the US has such a mess with suing is that each
person has to pay his own court costs, ie, you sue me for some stupid reason,
I spend $$$ defending myself, I win, but am still out $$$.  The article
mentioned that the US was one of the only countries to have such laws and
that most countries made the loser pay both sides fees (ie, you better be
sure of your case before you sue me because if I win, you pay both sides).
The idea is to deter the "stupid" suing that costs $$$ for stupid complaints
that are not really grounded.  

Does Sweden (or Scand.) have the loser pay all?  (So far my stay in Germany 
supports the idea of loser paying, I being involved in a case against an 
insurance company because of a car accident, not yet resolved.)

Chad

    Yes, in Germany, the ,loser usuallly pays. However, if the cae is not
    clear, or dismissed as minor, each side pays their own costs.
    
    On the other hand, almost everyone in Germany has a
    'Rechtschutzversicherung' which pays all legal costs.
    
    I'd think a bigger reason for the situation in USA is that the lawyer
    fees are not regulated as in many European countries; in Germany, the
    rates are fixed, regardless of whether you (=the lawyer) wins or
    looses.

    As far as I can surmise, practice here in Norway is that the decision
    as to who pays court costs is actually made as part of the settlement
    (possibly, that decision is made by the judge, though I am not sure of
    that). I have seen decisions go in several directions: Loser paying,
    winner paying, each paying.
    
    Quite a different matter is whether this has a great bearing on the
    rather unique American practice of "suing". I think there ar e larger
    and more fundamental reasonf for this. First of all, the Common Law
    philosophy in itself. Briefly, under most Civil Law (Roman Law,
    Napoleonic Code, etc) systems, "the Court" or "the Law" is a more
    active part, and often will initiate legal proceeding against an
    individual for breaking a given law based on a complaint by a person
    feeling victimized. In many similar cases in the US, there would be no
    "Law of the Land" that would permit the legal apparatus to initiate
    action (nor would it be customary or exprected) so the normal recourse
    of the supposed victim is to bring civil suit. Examples that pop to
    mind immediately include areas like libel, physical damage to
    individuals due to carelessness on part of someone else, etc.
    
    Second reason (which flows from the first) is the size of settlements,
    that would be given in a civil suit. They do NOT have the character of
    punishment, only real compensation, requiring fairly rigorous
    justification. 
    
    Third reason (relates to physical damage suits), is that medical
    expenses are covered by the public sector, so the basic principle is
    that the economic aspect of treatment are not really an "expense" from
    the individual's side. This does not mean that individuals cannot sue
    (government) hospitals for permanent physical damage to themselves due
    to erroneous or negligent treatment; however, the settlements are very
    much lower than in the US.
    
    A fourth reason (at least here in Norway) is that lawyers must be paid
    hteir hourly fees by the people hiring them. They can NOT be
    hired on a no pay/no cure basis, where they get a percentage of the
    final settlement if they win and nothing if they lose.
    
    Other things come into the picture, such as the basic traditional view
    of property ownership; the concept of "trespassing" (no single
    Norwegian word for that, to my knowledge) vs the responsibility of
    owners of property (minimal compared to in the US).
    
    Basically, the difference is rather deep and philosophical. 
    
    Mauritz
    

    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    From: [email protected] (Tomas Eriksson)
    Subject: Swedish parliament open for the season
    Sender: [email protected] (Usenet)
    Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
    Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 19:21:27 GMT
 
    Well, since this group has been rather dead for the last several days, 
    I'll make a contribution...
 
    Today, Riksdagen (the Swedish Parliament) opened for the season (the 
    year 1992/93). The King held a speech &c. in traditional fashion.
 
    The Government's policy declaration for the year, read by PM Carl Bildt 
    (conservative), contained one thing worth notice, or rather did *not* 
    contain one item that has been found there for several decades.
 
    The traditional phrase about "Sweden security policy is to be 
    non-aligned aiming at neutrality in war" had been struck from the
    policy declaration and replaced with "Sweden is not a member of any of
    the large military alliances". The fact that the traditional Swedish
    policy of "neutrality" is somewhat out-of-date in today's Europe is not
    controversial. However, it is controversial whether Sweden should join
    the WEU or some kind of common EC/EU defence.
 
    The speaker of Riksdagen, Ingegerd Troedsson (conservative), wrote a
    few days ago that she thinks the parliament should be in session during
    a longer part of the year. Her opinion was that the parliament should
    be finished for summer a week or two earlier than now, before June 1,
    but that the parliament should open one month earlier, about September
    1.  She would also like that the parliamentary year formally would not
    end until the parliament opens for the next season. This would make it
    easier and less dramatic to call in the parliament during the summer. 
    Today, the parliament can be called in during the summer to make quick
    decisions, but hardly just to debate. Mrs. Troedssons opinion was that
    the parliament should have been in session, and been debating, during
    the financial/currency crisis a few weeks back.

    Also, the Swedish fiscal year will probably be aligned with the
    calendar year in a few years time, and no longer run from July 1 - June
    30. This means that the Government's budget will progress through
    Riksdagen during the autumn, and not during the spring. The budget is
    usually presented in mid-January, with a batch of additional government
    proposals coming in April or so.
 
    Tomas

Re: -1

Just a tad off the subject, but I happened to be standing out in front of 
Parliament that day when it opened and saw all the pomp and ceremony that
goes along with it.  What a treat it was to see the King and Queen go by in
their horse-drawn carriage, and their entourage of soldiers on horseback 
leading the way and bringing up the rear.  There I was, oblivious to why all
this was taking place, and just happened to be in the right place at the right
time.

joan

    From: "Jonas E. Anderson" <[email protected]>
    Organization: Central Michigan University
    Date:         Sun, 15 May 1994 21:41:14 EDT
    Subj:   Swedish Prime Minister's address
    
    Hi, just for your trivia, here is the Swedish Prime Ministers e-mail
    address:  [email protected]
    
    I got this address with an accompanying message not to write any
    unecessary e-mail due to the fact that he reads them himself. Now
    whether or not he actually does I don't know but please keep that in
    mind.
    
    jonas
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    From: "Hans V. Hornfeldt" <[email protected]>
    
    He (Carl Bildt) does in fact [read] the messages himself, as opposed to
    Bill Clinton... :-)  When they were about to install the Rosenbad
    system, someone discovered that they were breaking some Swedish law.
    Carl, however, was so enthusiastic about this project, that he insisted
    they'd continue according to plans and later vote for a change of the
    Swedish constitution. :-)
    
    -Hans

   Date: Mon, 16 May 1994 16:02:00 EDT
   Reply-To: [email protected]
   Sender: International Swedish Interest discussion list - SWEDE-L
   From: Jan Brittenson <[email protected]>
   Subject: The Swedish Cabinet's BBS
   To: Multiple recipients of list SWEDE-L <[email protected]>

    I have an old friend who helped set up the Internet connection for the
    Swedish Cabinet's BBS (he works at Sunet, the Swedish University
    Network, the Internet backbone in Sweden), so I sent him a message
    asking for a short description, in Swedish.  I resisted the urge to add
    bracketed translations -- figuring it would be a fun way for some
    readers to practise a little informal real-life Swedish.


                                                -- Jan Brittenson
                                                   [email protected]


    From: Rickard Schoultz <[email protected]>


    Hej,

    De k�r en BBS av typen FirstClass, som g�r p� en Macintosh. Den �r
    ganska bra som BBS, med grafiskt anv�ndargr�nssnitt, klienterna �r
    gratis osv.  Den �r ocks� �ppen f�r allm�nheten, med d� kan de bara
    skicka brev till statsministern.

    Till den �r det anslutet, via UUCP, en Sun (info.sb.gov.se). Den
    fungerar som mailgw till FirstClass-burken, gopherserver
    (gopher.sb.gov.se) samt HTTP-server (http://www.sb.gov.se/).

    Jag har inte haft s� mycket att g�ra med sj�lva BBS:en, utan enbart
    internet-delen.

    Syftet har varit att �ppna en mer direkt linje till statsministern dit
    "alla" kan skriva - Carl Bildt �r dessutom ganska teknikintresserad och
    hade sett en demo av Mosaic f�rut, s� det skulle man ha;  sen gjorde
    det ju inte s� mycket att man kom f�re Clinton med en WWW-server... :-)

    Han l�ser faktiskt alla brev ocks�, men svarar inte p� m�nga
    personligen. Han har en liten grupp som g�r det �t honom.

    -Rickard