tions are to be put aside (including the lexical meaning of the word itself). The concept must be formally valid in order to constitute a scientific concept, that is, the concept must be possible to set in a non-contradictory relationship to the context of reality.168 “The quest for a definition of lawonly has proper scientific meaning as a quest for a principle that is possible to incorporate into a system of concepts of reality, a principle in which the so-called legal phenomena, with reference to similar characteristics, have their specific explanation.”169 Here we see Hägerström from the very beginning of his career, on the one hand, taking his cue from the scientific ideals of Immanuel Kant,170 and on the other, his explanatory premiss providing a fact or concept with meaning by placing it in a greater context of reality, making his explanations aimed at synthesis rather than analysis, by showing a thing’s place in a greater surrounding, but not to the thing’s isolation from same surrounding. (The analysis is of course a constitutive element in the search for an explanation, but it is not the explanation itself). One of Hägerström’s intentions inStat och rätt was to demonstrate that the current theories of public law failed to correspond to public law, especially when describing the relationship between the state and the law.171 What causes problems is that classical theory takes the empirically uncorroborated idea of a social contract as its premiss. According to the theory of the social contract this contract defined as well as instituted the relationships between state and law, sovereign and subjects, rights and duties a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 433 4 . 1 analys i s of publ ic law theory 168 Ibid., pp. 22-23. 169 Ibid., p. 23. My translation. Swedish:“Sökandet af enrättsdefinition har då egentligt vetenskaplig betydelse endast såsom ett sökande efter en i systemet af verklighetsbegrepp infogbar princip, i hvilken de s.k. rättsliga företeelserna med hänsyn till likartade egenskaper ha sin egentliga specifika förklaringsgrund.” 170 See, e.g., ibid., p. iii. 171 Ibid., pp. 201-210.
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