The Right to Engage or Refrain: A qualitative study on the debate regarding sexual crime legislation in Sweden since 1965

Sammanfattning: The debate regarding the effectiveness of sexual crime legislation has been a reoccurring topic in Sweden. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the debate in the preparatory work of sexual crime legislation in Sweden since 1965. The research question is posed as follows: What are the main arguments provided in the preparatory work of the sexual crime legislation since 1965, and how has this lead to the current consent-based sexual crime law? To answer this question this thesis uses Klaus Krippendorff’s Content Analysis as a method, as well as the two following theories: Carol Smart’s critical feminist legal theory and Thomas Mathiasen’s sociology theory of law. The result of this thesis shows that the consent law was able to gain support when analysing the normative effects each law has had on the societal view on sexual violence, which has developed from a law that finally criminalized rape within marriage in 1965 to a consent-based sexual crime law in 2018.