2013 at the Ombudsman institution emphasised that a special advisor in a government department is basically a civil servant, who must observe the rules regulating the public administration. The Ministry of Taxation subsequently informed us that the Ministry would take various measures to ensure that special advisors understand their role. A special category of cases concerns the so-called ‘ legal authority issues’. Do the public authorities have a legal basis for the actions they take, and how strong must the legal basis be in varying situations? Two very different cases from 2013 illustrate these questions. In one case, the Environmental Board of Appeal had bought private legal assist­ ance (from the Legal Adviser to the Danish Government, Kammeradvokaten) for processing a backlog of appeals concerning livestock farming (2013-9). The Legal Adviser to the Danish Government did not at any time make final decisions in the cases – the Board did that – but did carry out consultations, among other things, and prepared drafts for decisions. It is – or at least it was, until our statement in the matter – unclear if a public authority can leave case preparation to, for instance, private law firms in this way without statutory authority. We adopted a relatively pragmatic approach, emphasising among other things that the Legal Adviser to the Danish Government could not make final decisions in the cases (this would undoubtedly require explicit statutory authority), and that the involvement of private players in public authorities’ case preparation could be in the best interest of citizens, for instance by resulting in faster case processing. But we also listed a number of important conditions which such arrangements must meet, based on the principle that an arrangement must never prejudice citizens’ rights. In another case, an upper secondary boarding school had expelled a higher preparatory course student because he had smoked cannabis on a night out during a weekend (2013-24). We took a detailed look at how far a school may go based solely on rules issued by the school in accordance with the Danish principle of implied powers, meaning the principle that a public institution may to a certain degree establish ‘local rules’ if these are necessary for the institution to function. The student’s cannabis intake had taken place during his leisure time and outside the school grounds. And there was no evidence that the student was subsequently under the influence of drugs within the school grounds. On that basis, we did not find that the school could expel the student – his expulsion was not necessary for the school to function. We recommended to the Ministry of Education that specific statutory authority be provided if the leisure-time behaviour of students were to be curtailed in this way. 17