DISSENTING OPINIONS IN THE NORWEGIAN SUPREME COURT

The aim of this article is to explain what it is that influences judges in the Norwegian Supreme Court. to write dissenting opinions. The Supreme Court hears cases where the legal method is flexible enough to give different outcomes. The use of different sources of law allows considerable room for discretion, and in several cases judges look to other sources of law than the purely legal to arrive at a solution. Inspired by American research on judicial behaviour, I argue that the propensity of judges to give dissenting opinions can be explained by variables from three models of judicial behaviour located in the intersection between legal and political science. My multilevel analysis of individual votes in 1330 criminal cases in the Supreme Court after the introduction of the "to-instans" reform in 1996 shows that judges' propensity to write dissenting opinions is influenced by their individual characteristics, and by collegial and contextual characteristics of the cases. Dissent is more likely to occur in complex cases, or in cases in which judges are appointed by both socialist and non-socialist governments. Also, a judge's propensity to dissent is influenced by previous work experience and whether the judge is chief justice or is hired temporarily by the Supreme Court.