constituted a fact of law nor a relevant legal argument. On the contrary, Hägerström thought it unthinkable that the classical jurists: Consequently, as far as Hägerström saw it natural law held neither autonomous value nor autonomous relevance to practicing Roman jurists and judges. The Roman’s animistic ideas and the formalistic forms of Roman acts of law (juridical acts) merely referred to those specific formal facts of law that had to be satisfied in order that the intended legal consequences could enter into effect. Animism seems only to have served as the Roman’s own theoretical explanation of why, how, and when certain legal consequences followed upon the realization of certain legal facts, as well as to why such facts of law existed at all. In other words, the animistic ideas of the Romans might only served a legitimizing function, describing the metaphysics of (Roman) law. The Roman legal order would have worked just as well with animism, symbolism, representative magic, and so on as without them. In fact it appars as if these superstitious animistic beliefs served no other practical and actual function for the realization of legal consequences other than a legitimizing function.35 What Hägerström overlooked, however, is the fact that the strict formal demands of Roman law served a function of publicity, insofar as the fulfillment of formal legal requirements very often involve the corolp a r t v i , c h a p t e r 1 386 34 Ibid., pp. 611-612. 35 Cf. Hägerström, Magistratische Ius, pp. 80-81, where Hägerström points to the careful observance of formalia, legal as well as religious, that is characteristic for the Roman notion of law. “… nicht zwischen dem naturrechtlichen Gesichtspunkte für die Betrachtung des ius civile und der in diesem Rechte selbst hervortretenden Auffassung von seinem eigenen Charakter und Gültigkeitsgrunde unterschieden und von letzterem Gesichtspunkte aus nicht jede Vermischung des aequum et bonum und des ius sowie jede Zurückführung der Gültigkeit des ius civile auf das Naturrecht - selbst kein wirkliches ius vor dem ius civile! - aufs schärfste abgelehnt hätten!”34
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