Per Olof Ekelöf’s article “Rättssamhälle och rättssäkerhet,” published in Svensk Juristtidning in 1942. The saved copy (raw response) is the svjt.se reader page with the journal’s own OCR text of the article; a PDF download is offered at the same URL.
What it is
Writing in 1942, against what he calls the recent years’ “hårdhänta åskådningsundervisning” — the brutal doctrinal schooling of the totalitarian states — Ekelöf argues that Swedes have come to take the rule-of-law society for granted and that its value becomes visible only when it is threatened. The article defines rättssäkerhet formally: its value “är oberoende av den gällande rättens innehåll” — it means nothing other than that life in society is shaped by the rules of the law in force (s. 15). On that definition the concept cannot reach the content of a rule: a grotesque but properly enacted and applied law offends justice, not rättssäkerhet. Ekelöf nonetheless argues rättssäkerhet carries more weight in a liberal than in a state-socialist order, because it there spans a wider range of human interests.
What it is evidence for here
This is the primary text behind the vault’s most-quoted Swedish legal-theory definition, cited in Rättssäkerhet, Realist foundations of Swedish rättssäkerhet deficits, and Per Olof Ekelöf. All three previously quoted it second-hand through Om rättssäkerhet note 9; the original is now preserved and readable directly. It is the doctrinal anchor for the “disarmament” channel in Realist foundations of Swedish rättssäkerhet deficits: a definition of the rule-of-law value that cannot be used to say a rule’s content is wrong.
Limitations
The saved artifact is the journal’s OCR of a 1942 typeset page. The OCR is good but not perfect, so quotations should be checked against the PDF at the original URL before being relied on verbatim. The article is in Swedish.
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