[...]... abandon the absolute monarchy Consequently, he called a constitutional convention.15 The constitution’s main drafter, Monrad, modelled the draft mainly on the Belgian Constitution of 1830 and the Norwegian Constitution of 1814 Concerning the bill of rights in particular, he looked towards the Declaration of Independence and to American constitutions.16 The 1849 Basic Law was thus modelled in part on the. .. discussing American influence on the exercise or theorisation of judicial review once the institution was in place The intellectual history of judicial review in Iceland and Denmark has barely been mentioned in legal literature and judicial review in and of itself has not been fully theorised there.5 It is therefore the story of American influence on Nordic constitutional law which will be told in the following... circumstances was therefore a key tenet of the Norwegian constitutional tradition of the 19th century In 1905, Norway left the union with Sweden but the Constitution remained in force, and apart from the dissolution of the Union there was little constitutional change The Constitution of 1814 remains in force to this date Apart from the period of German occupation from 1940 to 1945, when the Constitution was effectively... further, the constitutional history and the outlines of the constitutional systems of the countries in question will be sketched briefly 1.1 A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF NORWAY, DENMARK AND ICELAND Amongst the Nordic countries, Norway has been the leader in adopting and adapting American constitutional theory This may be due partly to historical reasons, but American constitutions, both the. .. sections on judicial review in Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations.100 The treatise’s emphases on stable expectations and the protection of property and vested rights were also inspired by American constitutional law It will be described how American law influenced the discussion of substantive areas of the law, such as the law of eminent domain and taxation, and how the Norwegian doctrine of vested... Norway and influential in the other Nordic countries So even though the doctrines advanced in the Norwegian treatises did not all make their way to case law, one must in the first instance look at them to analyse the impact of American legal thought on Nordic constitutional law 2.3.2 The Present Constitution of Norway” One of the fundamental works of Norwegian constitutional law, T.H Aschehoug’s Norges... in Norway Based on that work, the theory here is that Norwegian courts borrowed and used concepts and constructions of the constitutional ideals of liberty and separation of powers that had evolved in the U.S over the previous century These concepts and constructions concerned the goals and ideals of democratic governance and informed judicial decisions and set the terms of constitutional debate for... been part of American constitutional theory at least since the founding of the Republic Madison discussed the problem of factions in Federalist No 10, noting that the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property”.28 He went on to describe how the proposed constitution would control the effects of faction One commentator has noted, based on this,... happened between the two World Wars and in the years following World War II There is no doubt that American constitutional law in the 1950s differed from American constitutional law in the 1890s in important ways This part will focus on how the changes that took place in American constitutional law in the early 20th century were described in the Nordic countries and how some of the ideas and theories which... constitutional theory in the decades around World War II were assimilated into Nordic jurisprudence and theory Part 4 discusses the influence of American law in Nordic constitutional thought after 1970 During this period, American law essentially disappeared from Nordic court opinions There was also a sharp decline in the discussion of American law in Nordic theory It will be argued that in spite of . THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICAN THEORIES OF JUDICIAL REVIEW ON NORDIC CONSTITUTIONAL LAW THE RAOUL WALLENBERG INSTITUTE HUMAN RIGHTS LIBRARY VOLUME 25 THE. American Theories of Judicial Review 181 4.2.4. Conclusions 204 4.3. AMERICAN INFLUENCES ON THE INTERPRETATION OF THE EUROPEAN HUMAN RIGHTS CONVENTION AND THE