Central to Hägerström’s analysis of law are legal concepts such as the notions of “rights” and “duties.”Any attempt to introduce metaphysical arguments in order to prove the existence of objective legal rights and duties, or to introduce ideal law as a real scientific concept, most certainly evokes Hägerström’s condemnation. For according to him, any legal concept based upon such premisses would lack correspondence to reality, and would thus be unreal.55 (NB:One must remember not to confuse reality with existence, as the former to Hägerström has a formal content, while the latter possesses a material as well as formal content. See Part III). Hägerström levels his critique at the predilection of modern jurisprudence to connect unreal concepts to existing facts and to construct (non-existent) facts intended to correspond with either, or both, real and unreal concepts.Accordingly, a real concept may be brought together with its corresponding existing fact without Hägerström raising any objections.To Hägerström, the problem was that the legal concepts, as they had been constructed by the prevailing doctrine up until then, in many cases neither expressed objective facts of law nor real legal concepts.56 On the basis of that observation, Hägerström and the p a r t v 308 55 Hägerström, “Rättsidéers uppkomst (1917),” pp. 36-43; Objektiva rättens begrepp, pp. 162-168; “The Notion of Law,” pp. 250-256. 56 Cf. Hägerström,“Begreppet viljeförklaring,” pp. 99-100;“Declaration of Intention,” pp. 299-300. Are Natural Law and the Metaphysics of Law Dead? chap te r 2
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