Time to sort out the separation of powers in Sweden

Thomas Bodström was Justice Minister in the Swedish government of the Social Democrats until 2006, and was well known for his high profile efforts to tighten rape laws in Sweden. So who is it now, still a MP, who is the plaintiff’s attorney (mÃ¥lsägarbiträde) in the high profile rape case of Tito Beltran in Ystad? Well, that would be Bodström who has started to take on cases again now the Social Democrats are in opposition and he’s no longer a minister. You would think that being chair of the Justice Committee in the Riksdagen would be enough to keep him occupied, but no, Thomas is trying out the laws that he wrote… So will Bodström be interpreting the law in the way it is written, or how he wanted it to be interpreted when he wrote it? And how much influence will Bodström’s former role have over the judge? It’s not as bad as Beltran claims (“worse than Chile during the dictatorship“) but I wonder how many countries would be happy to have such a blurring of the boundaries between everyday lawmaking and court trials?

So why, I started to wonder, is no-one making a fuss about this? Well because – you guessed it – the opposition have been at it too. Peter Althin was the defence attorney for the Anna Lindh murder trial, defending Mijailo Mijailović. Althin is a MP for the Christian Democrats (now in government, then in opposition).