General administrative law covers the rules common to most administrative branches, regardless of authority or subject area. General administrative law also includes the rules on public access to information and confidentiality, municipal law and administrative process.
Research into administrative law conducted within the subject of law can be divided into the following areas.
Sami law
Research in Sami law has been conducted at the higher education institution for 30 years. The research in Sami law is part of international research in indigenous law and has been conducted partly through research funded by government research funding bodies at national level and partly through collaboration in international research projects. Research in Sami law within the subject of law has focused on matters of administrative law linked to Swedish rules of law regarding Sami business and land rights. The research has resulted in several international research reports and a number of international anthologies.
Public access to information, confidentiality and IT law (digitalisation)
Since 2010, research has been conducted in the field of publicity and confidentiality with special focus on issues relating to authority collaboration. In recent years, this research area has been expanded to include IT law with a focus on issues relating to digitalisation of the public sector, such as legal conditions for automated decision-making, profiling and AI. The IT-legal issues span several different areas of law, such as constitutional issues, administrative law, public access and confidentiality, data protection law and contract law. The area of IT is constantly evolving and there is great demand for jurisprudence research in the area.
Interaction between private and public law
A doctoral project within the subject of law on the theme of privatisation of public activity and the principles of the rule of law has been under way since 2020. Within the framework of the thesis project, the legal consequences of privatisation of public activities are studied to determine which parts of public law are no longer applicable when public data are handed over to individual subjects. This, in turn, is explored in relation to the principles of the rule of law in order to ascertain whether privatisation of public services, or public tasks, at any level risks eroding our rule of law.
Since 2021, research has been conducted within the subject of law relating to issues and perspectives linked to the legal aspects of problems that often arise when the public sector affects the functioning of the market in different ways through its actions. The public sector can influence the functioning of the market either through its own business commitment, as a supporter, in the public capacity as a regulatory authority, or as a client. The areas of law that have been in focus are mainly the rules that form the framework for the public’s competence to conduct business, such as municipal law, the competition law provisions that regulate the role of the public as a market actor, EU state aid law as well as Swedish national regulations regarding public aid, and the regulatory framework that surrounds public procurement.