History of the Faculty of Law

The Faculty of Law was founded in 1907. The Faculty was intended to provide an alternative to the more closed academic environments of the traditional universities. Advocating for an institution of higher learning in the capital was also a form of call for academics to climb down from their ivory tower and enter society.

Advocating for an institution of higher learning in the capital was also a form of call for academics to climb down from their ivory tower and enter society.

As early as the 1820s, the question of establishing a university or law school in Stockholm was raised. The lawyer Johan Gabriel Richert was an early adopter. Inspired by his father's passion for the French Revolution, he launched a general attack on Swedish society in his 1822 publication "Ett och Annat om Corporationer". Among other things, he criticised the academic jurisdiction, according to which Swedish universities had exclusive jurisdiction over their teachers and students, with their own police force, prisons and courts.

Through academic jurisdiction, a powerful corporation such as the university had, according to Richert, developed into a state within the state allowed to dominate small communities such as Uppsala and Lund. If, however, the university was relocated to the capital, it would be transformed into a very small corporation in a vast society and incorporated into the national organisation.

Liberated from the tyranny of books

At a university in the capital, the student, freed from the tyranny of books, would open their mind to the general conditions of citizenship, effectively counteracting both one-sidedness and egotism. Scientific education should take place as much, if not more, in the world as in the study room, Richert argued. One of the aristocracy's most ardent advocates of a university in the capital was Count Erik Josias Sparre. He believed that the practical sciences in particular would have a better chance of flourishing in the urban centres than in the rigid rural universities. At the Riksdag of 1856-57, he presented his arguments:

Do you believe that here in Stockholm it would be possible for a professor, semester after semester, year after year, to sit and hold the same old lecture, which the students know all too well, while they sit with the same in written form and follow the professor from cover to cover, to monitor him just in case he might undertake to alter it in some way? I believe that such would not go unchallenged here, but would rather arouse ridicule and indignation. I believe that the professors would be compelled to duly follow progress in the sciences.

The capital as a hotbed of sensual pleasures

Sparre was dealt a counterblow by, among others, Court of Administrative Appeals judge Carl Printzensköld, who feared that the presence of hundreds of students in the capital city would result in both political unrest and debauchery. ‘Vice,’ remarked another participant in the debate, ’can never be so seductive in a small town as in a large city, where refined sensual pleasures daily entice the pleasure-seeker and seduce the weak.’

When the parliamentary route proved impracticable, a private initiative was launched in 1869, inviting the public to participate in a fundraising campaign in favour of the establishment of a university in Stockholm. Fundraising was slow and due to the lack of funds, efforts were primarily focused on establishing a faculty of philosophy.

Sparre presented the proposal again at the 1872 Riksdag, this time with the argument that the teaching of law at the existing universities was very poor. According to Sparre, an academic institution of law close to the highest judicial and legislative authority would lead to a fruitful interaction between theory and practice. However, the proposal was rejected once again.

In 1888, on a private initiative, a meeting was held to discuss the possibility of establishing a faculty of law in Stockholm. The meeting resulted in a committee that in 1893 submitted a proposal to the Board of Stockholm University College (now Stockholm University) for the establishment of a Faculty of Political Science and Law. By involving the capital's many practising lawyers in teaching, the education would have a greater element of practice, while the law scholars would have more time for research and the practitioners would become aware of theoretical issues.

Catch 22

The flow of donations threatened to drain away for Stockholm University College. The College was increasingly forced to rely on annual grants from the City of Stockholm, which ceased in 1894. The city council declared itself willing to contribute new funds provided, among other things, that the school was granted the right to award degrees. On 11 March 1904, the school was granted the right to award degrees in the subjects where professorial chairs were held. For the planned Faculty of Political Science and Law, the right to award degrees would be examined when its professorships were filled.

The university was now in a catch-22 situation. Without the right to award degrees, there was no funding from the City of Stockholm, and without a financial contribution from the city, there was no way to finance the professorships required for the right to award degrees. The salvation came in the form of a donation of SEK 200,000 to the Faculty of Law from the late Consul General Johan Wilhelm Smitt.

In 1907, a Faculty of Law was finally established in Stockholm. The ideas of an open and accessible ‘citizens’ university’, with strong links to practical legal life, which underlay the establishment process, still characterise the activities of the Faculty of Law today.