Eroding From Within: How Formally Compliant Democracies Suspend the Rule of Law for Politically Marginalized Groups
Since 2022, Sweden has enacted or proposed a series of immigration measures that share a common feature: they retroactively shift the legal ground under individuals who followed the rules and built their lives on statuses that were valid when granted. Taken together, these policies constitute a significant erosion of the principle of legal certainty for non-citizens, and in particular beneficiaries of international protection and their families. This project operates from the assumption that this pattern is not a policy failure but an architectural one. Sweden has no constitutional court or mechanism with binding authority to prevent rights-violating legislation from entering into force. The Swedish Council on Legislation (Lagrådet) flags problems but the government proceeds regardless. The EU and ECHR frameworks exist as backstops but were never designed to stop legislation before it passes. The result is a system in which each unchecked measure emboldens the next, gradually eroding public acceptance of what the rule of law permits. The project will attempt to identify the architectural failure that enabled such policies, and, through comparative reference to jurisdictions with binding ex ante review, assess what more effective protection would require. The project will produce a legal analysis paper and a policy brief.
