249 vantage of legal science, legal practice, and the social sciences. In this sense, legal science is understood in extenso, encompassing comparative legal science and legal history. The relatively late perseverance of the subjective theory of legal interpretation can be explained by the fact that Finland was, despite its autonomous position as a Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire and with its own legislative and administrative organs, still part of an absolutist state."** Therefore, the need to stress the importance of the lawgiver’s intention as to the correct interpretation of a statute was obvious. For some scholars, like Wrede, it was natural to purport the objective theory as part of their legalistic campaign for Finland’s autonomy. After the parliamentary reform of 1906'*- and especially after the independence in 1917, the superation of the subjective theory seems logical. The importance of the development of Finnish legal theory at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century is in the relationship that it bears vis-a-vis legal practice. Insofar as the lawof proof is concerned, at the time that the crucial steps into modernity were taken in the 1850s and 1860s, no modern theories of interpretation or legal sources were yet there to prevent the judiciary’s deviation fromthe legal rules of proof. By the end of the 1800s, a crucial change in this respect had occurred, and nonobservance of statutory law of a corresponding magnitude would hardly have been possible any more. By then, the construction of a modern state and the corresponding legal positivism had already confirmed the supremacy of written statutes, reserving a place, however, in the hierarchy of legal sources for theJuristenrecht as well. In this process, the theory of subjective interpretation, difficult as it was to combine with the idea of legal systematization and the new parliamentary mode of legislation, had to go. All in all, the emerging legal theory confirmed an essential feature of modern law by uniting, at the theoretical level, the until then separate levels of law - legal practice, juristic writing, and legislation — and by confirming the supremacy of the written statute. The newuniformity was essentially a creation of modern legal science and a legal theory that, using the idea of judge-made law, was able to accommodate the sometimes differing levels of judicial practice and written statute under a common roof. Brusiin 1938 pp. 201-203, 246. After Brusiin, Finnish lcg.\l theorists sueh as Kaarle Makkonen and Aulis Aarnio have constructed their theories of legal interpretation on the same basis, the wish to somehow seize social reality and take it as the foundation of legal interpretation. For Makkonen, both objective and subjective theories of interpretation do in practice plav a role in legal interpretation; according to Aarnio, a legal interpretation should, as well as it can, reflect rational, common values. See Makkonen 1965 and Aarnio 1987. Björne 1991 p. 162. ■*- In 1907, the first unicameral parliament elected by a general and secret vote was established in Finland. This can be seen as having further strengthened the legitimacy of the national legislative organ in relation to the emperor, although the latter still had to approve the laws passed by the Parliament.
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