Non-Pecuniary (Idealistic) Damages in Tort. How to break up the Distinction Between a Internal and External View of Law

The traditional restrictive attitude towards claim for compensation about non-pecuniary harms in both cause law and legislation become weaker even if the theoretically and practically reason behind the old exception-construction remain. This reason can best be explained by the thesis about incommensurability when it comes to compensate for some losses that money cannot compensate. To explain why the exception-construction is problemized in recent days I think two circumstances has played an important role (1) the materialisation of human rights as a consequence of the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights in Sweden since 1995 and (2) the right to crime victim compensation and the establishing of victimology in the legal and academic field. In practice there is of course a co-operation between these two factors and there is also some kind of hybrids like the legal interest of for example discrimination. This tendency is in my opinion therefore a practical and concrete example of law and justice in the risk society where almost every person is a potential victim of crimes and discrimination or other violations. In the risk society, given Ulrich Beck’s definition, it is characteristic that these phenomenons in our society rub out the boarders between law and politics in the manifestation of reflexive subpolitics about flexibility. The possibility to obtain redress with this compensation function as a mean to support the judicial systems official goal that is to satisfied the citizens needs and at the same time secure the confidence and the legitimacy for the judicial system through the factors (1) legal security and (2) the legal rights of the individual. At the same time these compensations bring on inherent risks because of its unclear function and the incommensurability between injury and compensation that risks fall upon both the victims and the lawyer’s profession. So when human rights now is both a goal and a mean for democracy and violations of the citizens bring about a right to compensation this illustrate a paradox. The judicial system cannot handle this type of injury that has it is ground in public law without challenge traditional principles and the legal professionalism. This tendency is also interesting in a comparative perspective given the premise that the jurisprudence movement known as Scandinavian Legal Realism has had an influence on the Swedish judicial culture. This follows from two circumstances: (1) Given the Scandinavian Legal Realism it is impossible to set up a legal claim from a violation of justice or somebody’s rights and (2) even if it would be possible, it is impossible to imagine the basis of calculation of these compensation because there is no way for informal norms from the society to influence the formal legal norms and the application of the law (only the opposite) given the Scandinavian Legal Realism. The last circumstance is relevant because the compensation of non-pecuniary harms consist of incommensurability and the only way to calculate these compensation, so it make it serves as rectification or redress for the victim, is in reflection and influence of the informal norms or the “common sense of justice”. My topic presupposes that the legal field is influenced by the theory in jurisprudence and can we therefore talk about an idealistic tendency or “critical legal realist” movement that maybe illustrates in these compensations. In a more concrete perspective these compensations bring to the fore methodological question in social science of how we can get empirically knowledge about norms in our society

Novel Diagnostic Tools for Skin and Periorbital Cancer - Exploring Photoacoustic Imaging and Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy

The eyelids are susceptible to a number of skin cancers which are challenging to excise radically without sacrificing excessive healthy tissue. The way in which a tumor is delineated preoperatively has not changed significantly over the past century. The aims of the work presented in this thesis were to investigate two novel non-invasive techniques for diagnosing and delineating skin tumors.Extended-wavelength diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (EWDRS) was evaluated to determine its ability to differentiate between and classify different skin and tissue types in an in vivo pig model, with the aid of machine learning methods.The recordings were used to train a support vector machine, and it was possible to perform classifications with an overall accuracy of over 98%. The ability of EWDRS to identify the borders of pigmented skin lesions in an in vivo pig model was also evaluated. Using a thin probe, it was possible to detect the border with a median discrepancy of 70 μm, compared to the border found on histological examination.Photoacoustic imaging (PAI), a biomedical imaging modality that combines laser irradiation and ultrasound, was used to examine basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) and human eyelids ex vivo. Typical photoacoustic spectra were observed for BCCs as well as for the different layers of the healthy eyelid, and these structures could be visualized in three-dimensional images. A case was described in which PAI showed that the pentagonal excision of an eyelid BCC was non-radical, as was later confirmed by histological examination.In conclusion, both EWDRS and PAI are capable of differentiating between different kinds of tissue and, following further development and studies, could potentially be used to diagnose and delineate skin and eyelid tumors prior to surgical excision

Compensation for Victims of Sexual Violence in Sweden: Some Empirical Findings from a Socio-Legal Perspective

Compensation for Victims of Sexual Violence in Sweden: Some Empirical Findings from a Socio-Legal PerspectiveKarl Dahlstrand, PhD, lecturer at Sociology of Law Department, Lund University, Sweden.The background of this study is my doctoral thesis in Sociology of Law “Violation and Satisfaction: A Sociology of Law Study of Non-Pecuniary Damages to Victims of Crime” (2012). After about ten years, I decided to make a replication based on the same method as in the original study presented in 2012. The general findings from the replication study are presented in the report “Violation and Satisfaction: Replication of a Socio-Legal Study“ (2022). Both studies include two surveys, one involving the public and the other involving crime victims who had received compensation for criminal injuries from the Swedish Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority (Brottsoffermyndigheten). The study sample in the survey targeting the public consisted of self-recruited respondents from an online panel. The surveys consist of vignette questions selected from legal usage and questions about the victims’ experiences of the compensation. The legal rule about a victim’s right to compensation for the violation opens to different interpretations and several possible applications because of its vagueness. The study takes its starting point in how damages from criminal violations are determined. This type of non-pecuniary compensation to crime victims has a fundamental uncertainty regarding the computation of damages and what is meant by “violation” in the meaning of the law. There is also drift between the violation and the suffering, as to which the compensation is related. The violation dimension has a more “objective” connotation as a sanction in the sense of an attack on a protected interest within the rule of law. Whereas the suffering dimension focuses more on the “subjective”, individualized injury as the object of attack. According to the law, damages for violation should be set at a level reflecting the current social norms. Therefore, the compensation must be seen in relation to the context of criminal law, levels of punishment, the proportionality of the compensation in relation to the punishment and the crimes’ penal value.When the results from the replication were analysed, an in-depth analysis was made based on gender and focusing on sexual offences. The result showed significant gender differences in terms of how the respondents estimated different sexual offences and how they perceived the compensation. The compensation for Victims of Sexual Violence has been criticized and debated for a long time from different perspectives. To develop pathways to survivor-centred justice, I think some of these empirical findings can be both theoretically interesting from a socio-legal perspective and of practical value

Defying distance? The provision of services in the digital age

Digital platforms are transforming services by making the physical distance between provider and user less relevant. I quantify the potential gains this flexibility offers in the context of digital primary care in Sweden, harnessing nationwide conditional random assignment between 200,000 patients and 150 doctors. I evaluate causal effects of matching patients of varying risks to doctors with different skills and assess counterfactual policies compared to random assignment. Matching patients at high risk of avoidable hospitalizations to doctors skilled at triaging reduces avoidable hospitalizations by 20% on aggregate - without affecting other adverse outcomes, such as counter-guideline antibiotics prescriptions. Conversely, matching the best triaging doctors to the richest patients leads to more avoidable hospitalizations, since the most vulnerable patients are often the poorest. Hence, remote matching can sever the link between local area income and service quality in favor of a needs-based assignment, improving the effectiveness and equity of service provision

Skill-biased acquisitions? Human capital and employee mobility in small technology firms

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between acquisitions and mobility of knowledge workers and managers in small technology companies and how individual skills and capabilities moderate this relationship. Relying on the matched employer–employee data of the Swedish high-tech sectors from 2007 to 2015, we find that acquisitions increase the likelihood of employee departures, mainly in the form of switching to another employer, but that these acquisition effects are weaker for employees with technological competences. By contrast, the acquisition effects are found to be weaker for employees with managerial competences only when acquirers have a strong employee retention motive. When acquirers do not have a strong retention motive, managers, compared to other employees, are more likely to exit the (national) labor market after acquisitions. Our results suggest that the retention motive is a critical condition to explain post-acquisition employee turnover. Both technological and managerial competences are the types of human capital valued by acquirers when they have a strong retention motive

Less repressive and fairer foreclosure. Evidence from a randomized experiment at Kronofogden regarding the possibilities to break economic exclusion

Homeowners are facing worse personal finances with high inflation and increasing interest rates. New groups are at risk of overindebtedness and foreclosure. The entire household, including children, are affected by worse health and well-being. This leads to large societal costs. Hence, it is imperative to break the negative cycle of overindebtedness for these households. Foreclosure is enforced by Kronofogden (the Swedish Enforcement Authority) and aims to pay the debts. However, an unintended consequence may be that foreclosure is perceived as repressive. The degree of repression depends on how Kronofogden handles the proceedings. This research project contributes with knowledge about these mechanisms and how they may make it more difficult to break social and economic exclusion by answering the following research question: How repressive are the foreclosure proceedings at Kronofogden?It is important to understand when and why foreclosure becomes repressive because it may reduce the possibilities to exit overindebtedness as the homeowner’s social network is reduced and their social trust is lowered. Today we have limited knowledge about the mechanisms that make the exercise of public authority unintentionally repressive. The knowledge is relevant for public authoritative proceedings both in Sweden and internationally. The authorities may use this knowledge to adapt their handling protocol to avoid future repression

Is the commercialisation of academic R&D weak? A critical assessment of a 'dominant belief' and associated policy responses

For some fifteen years it has been argued that Europe's research and industrial base suffers from a series of weaknesses, the greatest of which is the comparatively limited capacity to convert scientific breakthroughs and technological achievements into commercial successes. This perception of a strong European science base which is not translated into technological and commercial success has subsequently been labelled the "European Paradox". Over time the focus has shifted from discussing how European firms can increase their competitiveness, to the commercialisation of publicly financed R&D. There is a strong belief that the EU is under-performing in its ability to exploit and commercialise publicly funded science. Scrutinising the interaction between universities and industry at the European level is, however, fraught with empirical difficulties. The phenomena in question are complex, and require very detailed analysis using local knowledge and case studies. An interesting case in point for a detailed scrutiny is Sweden in which a perception of a Paradox has influenced policy discussion for two decades. The first purpose of this paper is to critically assess a) the validity of this dominant belief of a poor commercialisation of academic R&D, and b) the actual and proposed solutions to handle that problem. In addressing this first purpose, we focus empirically on the case of Sweden. With high R&D spending and a long standing perception of a "Swedish Paradox", the Swedish case is, arguably, of particular value for a detailed analysis. First, we detail how the dominant belief has emerged over the past two decades. Second, we scrutinize the empirical foundation of the literature that upholds that belief as well as empirical indications that cast serious doubt on it. The second purpose is to critically assess the usefulness of copying US science policy solutions in Europe in which much attention is given to the ownership of IPR. This is done by returning to the EU level and draw upon literature in both the US and Europe. The paper ends with our main conclusions