be solved by a properly conducted scientific analysis of these premisses. The first premiss of modern jurisprudence is that law and legal concepts, such as legal duties and rights, correspond to facts. Hägerström’s question is simple enough: What are these facts? A prevalent idea of late 19th Century and early 20th Century legal science was that the specific fact to which law should correspond was the protection accorded to the individual by the state through the state’s commands.This theory, the command-theory, however, is impossible to maintain on account of its incongruity with facts.To start with, the law of debts makes the command-theory impossible on account of the fact that neither the relationship of creditor-debtor, nor the duties that arise out of this relationship originate from any command of the state, nor from any means of protection accorded by the state.What the state can do is to force the debtor to give economic compensation for damages.Moreover, evidence and other procedural requisites do not constitute preconditions to the subjective right itself, but they constitute conditions to the realization of the state’s protection and its exercise of force.5 Hägerström continues: Accordingly, the sought-after fact corroborating the commandtheory is neither the protection provided to the private citizens by the state, nor the commands issued by an external power or a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 377 1. 1 the facts to which law should corre spond “Schliesslich ist gegen die Befehlstheorie in beiden Fällen zu bemerken, dass, wenn es sich hier um Befehle von Seiten der Staatsgewalt handelte, jede Rechtskränkung Kränkung des Rechtes des befehlenden Staates, nicht des des [sic!] Einzelnen wäre.Aber man nimmt ja dennoch ein besonderes Privatrecht an, abgesondert vom öffentlichen Recht. Und im Privatrechtsstreit kann es sich um keine andern Kränkungen drehen als solche, welche den Rechten der Einzelnen, nicht denen des Staates gelten.”6 5 Hägerström, Obligationsbegriff 1, pp. 1-4. 6 Ibid., p. 4.
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