The leaking Law

This paper takes its starting point in the question of how damages for violation through crime are determined by the law. Damages for violation is a type of non-pecuniary damage and the non-pecuniary damages to crime victims is the dominating type of these damages in Swedish tort law. Yet there is a fundamental uncertainty about the computation of damages and what is really meant by "violation" in the meaning of the law. The general opinion within the legal profession is that there is a lack of norms to compute the damages when it comes to compensation for violation, as the incommensurability between the violation and the financial compensation. The analysis and the results from my empirical study show several central dichotomies as between formal and informal norms and between the internal and external view upon law. But this is not simply meant as a critique, to show a "gap problem" or between "law in books"/"law in action", but rather to illustrate that what can be described as leaking law is a central dimension of a normative system that deals with values, languages and the application of general rules through interpretation in a certain context. Accordingly, the question is rather how it leaks instead of if, moreover; according to the legislator, the estimation of the compensation shall leak.