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Turning the Witness Stand into a Speaker's Platform: Victim Participation in the Norwegian Legal System as Exemplified by the Trial Against Anders Behring Breivik

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Solveig Laugerud  and
Åse Langballe
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Abstract

In this article, we investigate how victims pursue legal participation when they are confronted by legal barriers and dilemmas that arise from tensions between legal formality and lay expectations and contributions of legal proceedings. We use the trial against Anders Behring Breivik as a case. Breivik placed a bomb in Norway's Government District before he shot and killed 69 people on a small island. We analyze interviews with 31 victims who testified against Breivik in court. We argue that the circumstances of the trial against Breivik can be characterized as “ideal” in terms of victims’ rights. The exceptionality of this case facilitates a focus on unquestioned obstacles to victim participation concerning the professionalization of the legal system. We question the presumption prevalent among some theorists that the professionalization of the legal system excludes lay participation, by arguing that legal formality both alienate and empower lay participation.

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Law & Society Review , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 227 - 251
Copyright
© 2017 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The authors would like to thank Grete Dyb at NKVTS for facilitating this study and for making useful comments on the manuscript. A special thanks to May-Len Skilbrei at the University of Oslo for all her critical, insightful and constructive comments on this article.

Author Contributions: Laugerud, in collaboration with Langballe, designed the study and conducted the interviews. Laugerud analyzed the data material and drafted the manuscript; Langballe reviewed the manuscript.

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