Written by Erik Sonne
Folketingstidende - the official report of the plenary proceedings in the Danish Parliament (Folketinget) - contains unexpected information!
Thus, if you are looking for backstage information about the Royal Theatre, Folketingstidende might just be the right, although perhaps a bit unexpected, place to look. The introductory remarks to bill no. L 149 (Lovforslag nr. L 149 af 29. Januar 1981 - Forslag til Lov om ny- og ombygning af Det Kgl. Teaters Gamle Scene og om planlægning af opførelse af et nyt skuespilhus for Det Kgl. Teater) provides a detailed description of the Royal Theatre’s operational circumstances in the 1970s as well as the condition of its building stock over the years.
Publication of Folketingstidende has been ongoing since Denmark’s first constitution of 1849. Up until 2009, the report was a print document, but since then it has moved online. Thanks to a retro-digitization project, an online version of Folketingstidende from 1953 to the present is now available. In the coming years, online access will be extended to include all years from 1849 and onwards.
Folketingstidende online comprises more than two million documents, including all parliamentary documents such as plenary proceedings, introductory remarks to bills, committee reports, acts, parliamentary resolutions, etc. The Official Report of the parliamentary proceedings is overwhelmingly verbatim.
In addition to Folketingstidende, the Folketinget website is an excellent source of historical information, e.g. on the development of a specific policy area across time.
Check out our guide to Danish legal sources
Written by Erik Sonne
With the launch of Domsdatabasen hosted by Danmarks Domstole, something that for many years seemed like a Fata Morgana has now, in 2022, finally come into being.
Who has access?
Access to Domsdatabasen is public and free, and the overall ambition is to make the judgments and rulings of all Danish courts of law available to professionals, media, academia, and ordinary citizens alike.
What will you find?
By default, the database contains post-launch rulings, but it also comprises historical contents, mainly from the past 20 years, and a few rulings dating back even further. For instance, all historical rulings by the Court of Impeachment of the Realm (Rigsretten) are available from the database. For a start, rulings from the higher courts, i.e. the Supreme Court, the High Courts and the Maritime and Commercial Court, have been made a priority. As of May 2022, close to 1500 judgments and rulings are available from the database – of these about half originate with the county courts.
Domsdatabasen comprises civil cases as well as selected criminal cases of particular public interest. Once they are fully digitized, other criminal cases will also be available from the database.
Rulings are pseudonymised in that names of people will be removed whereas names of legal representatives and court officials from higher courts will remain visible.
Not quite there yet
Far from all judgments and rulings are available via Domsdatabasen as of yet. This means that you still rely on classic tools for a full picture, including UfR - Ugeskrift for Retsvæsen - as well as legal journals and books.
Check out the CBS Library guide to Danish legal resources
Fun fact
As suggested elsewhere, the implementation of Domsdatabasen proved to be an enormously protracted process. As early as the 1980s, voices were calling for the implementation of a national database of judgments and rulings. An interim result of these efforts was the transfer of administrative decisions, but not judgments, to the legal database Retsinformation. At the end of the 1990s, the Justice Department reached a decision in principle on the implementation of a national database of judgments and rulings. It took another 20 years for this decision to bear fruit.
If you want to explore this development in more detail, you will find an insightful and fun account by Professor Mads Bryde Andersen in his UfR paper Ugeskrift for Retsvæsen gennem 150 år (U.2017B.1)