jurisprudence renders it appropriate to define a few terms and concepts that will facilitate an understanding of Hägerström’s analyses and conclusions - namely, the terms legal norm, legal facts and consequences, and legal causality. According to Per-Olof Ekelöf (1906-1990) the terms legal, or jural, fact (Swedish: rättsfaktum) and legal effect or legal consequence (Swedish: rättsverkan, rättsföljd) and their synonyms have been in use in Swedish jurisprudence and legal practice at least since the mid-19th Century (where he finds them and their synonyms used by academic scholars), but were probably used even earlier.222 In Professor Carl Axel Reuterskiöld’s encyclopedia of law, Grunddragen af den allmänna rätts- och samhällsläran (1912), a descriptive account is given of what appears to be the prevailing opinion with regard to several doctrines of jurisprudence.Among them, we find a couple that are of special interest to our investigation - namely, the definition of legal norms, facts and consequences, and causality.According to Reuterskiöld, a legal fact constitutes the precondition for the execution of a legal norm.A legal consequence is the legal determination (Swedish: rättsbestämning) connected to a legal fact. A legal norm is the combination of a legal fact and a legal consequence. And finally, legal causality is the causality that is brought into existence through a legal consequence’s connection to a legal fact.223 Reuterskiöld’s definitions, however, do differ from Hägerström’s on one point, and that is with regard to the relationship between legal and natural causality. Since Reuterskiöld was of the opinion that the legal consequencemust invariably stand in an actual causal relationship with those facts that made up the legal fact, it was natural for him to have assumed that legal causality corresponded to natural causality, which in turn was the connection and affiliation to natural causality that made the causality legal, a legal consequence.224 p a r t v i , c h a p t e r 5 448 222 Ekelöf, “Juridisk slutledning och terminologi,” in Valda skrifter 1942-1990, p. 202. 223 Reuterskiöld, Grunddragen af den allmänna rätts- och samhällsläran, särskildt med hänsyn till positiv svensk rätt, jämte grundlinier till rättsutvecklingsläran och rättsvetenskapens historia, pp. 266-272.
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