242 legal sources. Hence, scientific law could only exert influence through legal practice.'^ To sum up, by the 1870s, legal science (Savigny’s “geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft”) had lost its autonomous position as a source of lawin the legal theory; only now was there a theoretical basis for legal subsumption based on statutory positivism.'^ These basic conceptions of lawas the supreme will of the state were then passed on to conceptual jurisprudence {Begriffsjurisprudenz) and the later positivist schools of law. The theory of legal sources is, therefore, a phenomenon of modern law. The need to determine the relations between legal sources stems from the primacy of statutory law. As positive lawenacted by parliament acquired a position and a legitimation that it had not previously had, legal science hurried to align the other legal sources into a hierarchical order. In this order, the sources ofJuristenrecht - legal science and legal practice - and Gewohnheitsrecht were clearly subordinated to the ius scriptum, the written parliamentary law. Nevertheless, they were all counted among the accepted sources of law. It is, indeed, not until modern law that the different strata of law, represented by the different legal sources — theoretical jurisprudence or legal science, practical jurisprudence or legal practice of different levels, and the written law, - meet. In modern law there arises a need, for the first time, to see all the levels of lawas forming a harmonious whole. Finding the right expression for this harmony is a task for legal science, itself one of the sources. But when does the actual theory of legal sources emerge in the Finnish juristic writing?The first manifestations of a modernizing theory of legal sources in Finnish legal science can be traced to the middle of the nineteenth century Manifestly attached to the traditional premodern legal literature, Johan Philip Palmén in his article “Of Precedents and Court Practice” (“Omprejudikater och praxis vid domstolar”) of 1855 assumes a negative attitude towards legal practice as a source of law; Palmén outrightly forbids anyone to “interpret customary law [in the Lawof 1734 PS 1:11] as court practice, or to search therein support for a validness of precedents as law.”-' By 1860, Robert Lagus’s opinion on legal practice as a source is already much more favorable. He divides the precedents into three classes, of which the first (letters and rescripts of the king to the appellate courts which expressly have been given the force of law) fits into the division only with difficulty. The other two classes of precedents - >8 Landau 1993 pp. 79-81. Ibid. pp. 83. But even in Gesetzespositivismus, the legal professionals at least partially maintained their positions. This “backlash” occurred with the help of the concept of Rechtsgefiihl (sense of law), developed by Gustav Riimelin and Rudolph von Jhering. Compared internationally, natural law was maintained in the curriculum of Finland’s only university for a long time, until the 1860s. Björne 1991 p. 21. -■ “... tolka ordet landssed [in the Law of 1734 1:11] såsomdomstolarnas praxis, eller att deraf hämta något stöd för giltigheten af prejudikater såsom lag ...“; cited at ibid. p. 137.
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