Anna Christensen

Anna Christensen (1936–2001) was a professor of private law at the Faculty of Law at Lund University, Sweden and a columnist in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Academically, Christensen is most well-known for her books Studies in the Law of Sale of Goods (Studier i Köprätt), Disqualification from Unemployment Benefits (Avstängning från arbetslöshetsförsäkring) and Residential Right in the Tenement House (Hemrätt i hyreshus), and for the development of the Theory of Law as Normative Patterns in a Normative Field. In 1975, Christensen became the first woman professor in legal science in Sweden.

Biography and academic career Anna Christensen was born in 1937 in Tumba, Sweden. She studied law at Stockholm University and carried out her studies in Uppsala where she, in 1970, successfully defended her dissertation in Commercial Law; Studies in the Law of Sale of Goods (Studier i Köprätt). Her doctoral thesis dealt with some of the problems concerning the right to treat a contract as of sale of goods as discharged – the right of rescission – in various situations that may rise in the course of performance. Focus was put on those special considerations relevant to the right of rescission which depended on how far performance had proceeded when the question of rescission came up. Five years later, in 1975, Anna Christensen was appointed Professor in Private Law at the Faculty in Law at Lund University. from 1980, Christensen studied the Swedish rules on disqualification from unemployment benefits on the ground of refusal of work and other self-imposed unemployment. The main purpose of the study was to disclose the control and steering of the citizens that is built into the Swedish social security system. According to Christensen, there was a strong interest on the part of the state to conceal the role that the Job Service played in the system. Furthermore, Christensen meant that the state had an interest in concealing how the behavior-steering and repressive functions of the social security system were inseparably associated with the supportive functions of the system – a fact that contradicted the ideology surrounding the Welfare State. The study represented an important shift in Christensen’s research towards a more theoretical, social-science-oriented and critical approach. 1994, she took the first steps towards creating the Theory of Law as Normative Patterns in a Normative Field. The theme of the study was the social security of tenancy and the residential rights in the tenement house. According to Christensen, this was a legal study, mainly conducted with a legal-dogmatic method and based on traditional legal materials, but the aim of the study went further than describing the precise content of the legal rules at a given moment. Instead, Christensen wanted to reveal underlying norms constituting society; Christensen explains how the rules on security of tenancy had developed in a field between two normative poles – one being the right to property of the owner, the other being the residential right in the tenement house. that was published in 1996, reflect the emphasis on historical and normative developments that characterized Anna Christensen’s research.

In the mid- and late 1990s, Anna Christensen displayed a growing interest in European comparative social security law, and took inter alia part in different comparative research projects at European level.

Anna Christensen was awarded a doctor honoris causa at the Law Faculty at Oslo University in 1994 and at the Law Faculty at Copenhagen University in 2000.