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In public debate There are many schemes in which people claim to represent others without being given any authority to do so. A current example is the acclaimed initiative “An Appeal for Representation Against Racism on Swedish Radio”, signed by 39 people (including some anonymous ones) with demands for, among other things, “an inventory of Swedish radio employees to determine how many have foreign and foreign backgrounds. And also an “inventory of how many of them are black / Afro-Swedish.” For anyone who is convinced of the correctness and appropriateness in a classic anti-racist civil rights stance, as Martin Luther King preaches Jr., there is certainly much to object to these lawsuits, but the question I now propose to dwell on is what I normally call. ” the error of power ”.
When an attorney meets another attorney professionally, it is assumed that the other attorney has the authority to represent the client that the person in question claims to represent. It is related to the nature of the profession and the explicit ethical requirements imposed on those who practice the legal profession. In all other cases, however, it is natural that as a lawyer you always have to prove that the person claiming to represent another also has the authority to do so. Either by looking at a written power of attorney or other authorization document, for example a registration certificate showing that you are authorized to represent the company or association that you claim to represent. This is because the authority for someone to enter into an agreement or perform other legal acts on behalf of another requires a clear expression of will (itself a legal act) that an agreement has been reached with someone to authorize them to act. in her name. This applies to young and old: from representing one of the parties in the acquisition of a large cross-border company to picking up medicine at the pharmacy for someone or helping an older relative sell their home.
Like jesper Sandström led in SvD (9/28) assumes that the callers in SR have “their own group” with them. They “demand positive discrimination in favor of the groups to which they themselves belong, and coldly hope that other members of these groups will feel comfortable being treated differently in this way.” In other words, you say to yourself, and perhaps even believe, that you have a power of attorney for all other individuals who are part of the group you claim to represent. But of course you don’t have that. And it is an extremely presumptuous attitude to pretend to have it. And also with prejudices. Because in that case, everyone with the same skin color, the same gender, the same functional variation, or whatever attribute they choose is now supposed to have exactly the same opinions, conditions, driving forces, and desires. Which is an attitude that characterizes the racist or sexist. Like oatmeal, it is an absurd idea that you should have some kind of power of attorney or mandate to represent other people just because you have a certain gender or melanin content in your skin.
You can ask where this “power of attorney error” originates. Of course, there is influence from American movements like Black Lives Matter. However, Swedish politics and the public have long been characterized by collectivist ideas about popular movements in which all interests of society can be represented by associations which in turn are represented by representatives of these associations. But today they don’t even pretend to need a democratic mandate.
For example, after having a dialogue with representatives of a Muslim congregation, one imagines that he has spoken to all Muslims in Sweden. The power of attorney error thus occurs not only with the sender, that is, the person who claims to represent others without a real mandate to do so, but also on the receiving side.
My first question when someone raises their voice with demands or statements made on behalf of a particular group, whether they be representational demands, quotas, or accusations of structural discrimination, is therefore: who has authorized you to represent the group that says represent?
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