The article discusses legal-political controversies over the implementation of international human rights conventions in Norway, with special attention to claims concerning judicialization and power transfer effects. Insofar as a dynamic interpretation of state obligations by international supervision agencies is said to affect the balance of legislatures to courts, such claims create a platform for critique of governmental initiatives to implement human rights conventions. In a recent controvercy over the incorporation of CEDAW into the 1999 Human Rights Act, government lawyers have on this basis argued what I here call a doctrine of “appropriate restraint”. The article recapitulates the CEDAW controvercy, and critically evaluates the doctrine’s content in relation to its power transfer claims. On May 8th 2009, the Norwegian Government presented the bill on incorporation of CEDAW into the Human Rights Act.

Key words: The Human Rights Act, judicialization, judicial review, the power transfer thesis, CEDAW.