The Swedish Code of Statutes ( sv, Svensk författningssamling; SFS) is the official

law code A code of law, also called a law code or legal code, is a systematic collection of statutes. It is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the cod ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

which contains the statutes and ordinances enacted and designated by the

Government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government i ...

, including a publication of all new Swedish

laws Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vari ...

enacted by the

Riksdag The Riksdag (, ; also sv, riksdagen or ''Sveriges riksdag'' ) is the legislature and the supreme decision-making body of Sweden. Since 1971, the Riksdag has been a unicameral legislature with 349 members (), elected proportionally and se ...

. Every law shall be cited an SFS number, including legislation amending already existing law. The number contained in the

citation A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose o ...

consists of a four digit year, a colon and then an incrementing number by year. For instance, the Instrument of Government is SFS 1974:152, with each amendment having its own SFS number. The amendments are usually referred to as (year:number) in the main law text. Unlike most continental European countries, however, Sweden's codified statutes do not include a comprehensive Civil Code comparable to the German BGB or the French Civil Code and instead set forth statutory law in a piecemeal fashion. For example, rather than addressing the law of obligations in one major title of a comprehensive civil code, Sweden addresses the subset of the law of obligations pertaining to torts in an isolated statute passed piecemeal in 1972 that is not itself comprehensive or complete. Similarly, Sweden's contract act just addresses selected topics in contract law leaving the rest to case law, rather than comprehensively addressing all facets of contract law as a civil code on the subject would.Christina Ramberg, "The Hidden Secrets Of Scandinavian Contract Law" Stockholm Institute of Scandinavian Law (2010) http://www.scandinavianlaw.se/pdf/50-15.pdf In other words, Swedish statutes are more similar in character to statutes in the United States and other

Commonwealth nations The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the Co ...

than to the comprehensive civil codes that predominate in continental European civil law systems and similar systems in Asia and Latin America based upon the continental European civil law systems. The Swedish Code of Statutes is enacted into statutory law, but is enacted into its own unified

legal code A code of law, also called a law code or legal code, is a systematic collection of statutes. It is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the cod ...

, which contains all of the laws enacted by the Swedish government, and includes the criminal law, criminal procedure, government regulations, legal information, civil law, agriculture, and many other major topic areas and subject matter that are important to the development and society of Sweden. The code is derived into positive law, with a mix of statutory law and civil law, and is amended from time to time. It also contains the

Constitution of Sweden The Basic Laws of Sweden ( sv, Sveriges grundlagar) are the four constitutional laws of the Kingdom of Sweden that regulate the Swedish political system, acting in a similar manner to the constitutions of most countries. These four laws are: th ...

References

External links

Svensk författningssamling
the official website of SFS * ''Regeringskansliet'''
law database

SFS in book format
from ''Regeringskansliet'' {{Legal codes by country Law of Sweden Legal codes