ABSTRACT
Sweden has courts of first instance, six courts of appeal and the Supreme Court. Since Sweden is not a federal state, it has – apart from administrative courts and the like – only one court organization. Selection and editing are done by the judges themselves, so there are no law reporters in Sweden. In Sweden a 'precedent' is a case reported in Nytt Juridiskt Arkiv (NJA). If a lower court refuses to follow a precedent, its judgment will be reversed on appeal, but the judge refusing to follow a precedent cannot be sanctioned to do so in any other way than through reversing judgment on appeal. No legislation exists concerning the force of precedents in Sweden, except for the possibility of working in and deciding cases in the Supreme Court in pleno. In interpreting precedents, use is made of a number of reasons which in part resemble argument by analogy in statutory interpretation.
