Erik Strand, 14.07.2026
I will discuss here a few examples of positions that have been promoted by key representatives in the Conservative Party in previous decades. I will start in 1970, when the Freedom of Information Act (offentleighetsloven, today offentleglova) was championed by then Prime Minister Per Borten. Former PM Erling Folkvord writes in a column about the opposition shown by the Conservative Party and then Minister of Justice Ragnhild Elisabeth Schweigaard Selmer (CP) to a law that few would express opposition to today:
“When the Storting passed the Public Access Act in 1970, access to state and municipal documents became a democratic citizen’s right.” Before that time, opposition politician Per Borten (Centre Party) had found it futile to call on the Labour government to legislate such a right of access. When Borten became Prime Minister and came to power, he followed up on this position, even though it was more than unpopular in his own government. Because Prime Minister Borten put his position on it, Minister of Justice Schweigaard Selmer (CP) had to ultimately draft a law that she herself was against. The alternative would have been a government crisis. 4 The law was reworked a few years ago, and today has very flexible exceptions.5“
I then fast forward a couple of decades to the second example. This concerns the then Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party, John G. Bernander, and statements he made in a reader’s post. The case concerned the introduction of a system of open hearings in the Storting. Here I must make the reservation that I did not clip the post from th newspaper, and that this post from before the Internet era is not available online. What I am writing is from memory, with the reservations that this entails.
Bernander’s post was a response to a post author who supported the introduction of open hearings in parliament on the grounds that the truth would come out (better) with open hearings. Bernander did not directly write that he was against open hearings in Stortinget (Norway’s parliament), but he went against the understanding that open hearings would lead to the truth coming out. Bernander wrote that the principle of contradiction – that different opinions come out in public – did not lead to the truth coming out. Without remembering for sure what reasoning Bernander presented, I think I remember that it was that different points of view tended to lead to noise and little constructive argument. He mentioned the O.J. Simpson case, which was current in the news at the time, as an example of this. He wrote that there was a reason why only Anglo-Saxon countries had chosen the principle of contradiction; other countries had chosen a different principle, possibly the principle of consensus.
The fact that Norway does not subscribe to the principle of contradiction was untrue, at least as far as the judiciary was concerned, at the time, and is even more so today. Otherwise, it is easy to see that Bernander has a point; the possibility of getting the truth out is not ensured by everyone having the opportunity to speak. There is often noise and diversionary maneuvers and so on. But one thing should be clear from history. The possibility of getting the truth out is not strengthened by rejecting the principle of contradiction.
Fampo 