ceived as being a system of rules whose precise meaning, content, definition, and determination are postulated to exist prior to the decided case, which in reality cannot be the case.What is interesting is that if this fiction is justified, then the French 19th Century proverb about the judge being nothing more than the mouth of the law is a most accurate description of law and the entirety of legal activities. But, reality is somewhat different. Of interest is the type of relationship that Hägerström postulates to exist between positive law (a system of fixed norms), and valid law (a system of rules to be fixed and applied).The two have a dialectic relationship to one another, for positive law constitutes the raw material to valid law when valid law is determined, while valid law (in the form of determined law: case law, and legal doctrine) in turn constitutes the raw material to positive law, which adopts and incorporates the principles formulated in or by valid law, which in turn becomes positive law, the raw material to valid law.According to this model, the aspect of law which is of greatest direct importance to Hägerström’s analysis of legal science, in its capacity of law-maker, is the circularity of law, its tendency to evolve and develop in a process fuelled by the interaction between, so to say, object, positive law, and subject, valid law, the interaction between the observed and the observer. A closer analysis of Hägerström shows that he wished to reintroduce into legal methodology the idea that the exposition or interpretation of a statute should be conducted according to a realistic understanding of the legal order.263 The tacit target of this observation is the will-theory, which functioned both as an ontological theory of law as well as a methodology of law - the will-theory being a theory of law containing unscientific concepts that cannot stand critical examination,264 and which can be held to be “notions only in appearance” making up “a concatenation a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 373 263 Cf. Hägerström, “Svikligt förtigande,” p. 311. 264 Hägerström, “Är gällande rätt?,” p. 95; “Is Positive Law?,” p. 55; Objektiva rättens begrepp, pp. 162-168; “The Notion of Law,” pp. 250-256.
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