legal causality (that legal reasoning per se is an operation where factual circumstances [legal facts] are subsumed under a general rule [a law] in order to decide whether or not the conclusion [the legal consequence] follows).240 What Hägerström objected to was Ernst Zitelmann’s adherence to the will-theory and the idea that the legislator had the authority and power to create an objectively real predicate (that is an objectively real subjective right) for the legal subject.241 However, Hägerström’s tacit acceptance of Zitelmann’s description of the nature of legal causality is understandable insofar as Zitelmann also gives a formal account of how juridical thought is structured (as a logical process in which a fact is subsumed under another, which involves that the formal structure of legal thought is syllogistic, in turn bringing about the practical consequence that we can deduce whether or not a fact [a legal consequence] can validly be said to follow from the existence of another [legal fact]).242 Zitelmann’s theory does not prescribe which legal substances must necessarily exist - as, for instance, Begriffsjurisprudenz would have it.243 What Zitelmann emphasizes is that the legislator alone has the power and authority to arbitrarily to create and establish the different elements of the norm, as well as to establish the causality existing between the different elements of the legal norm.244 Given Hägerström’s normative theory, these ideas must have appealed to him, even if he did not agree with the remainder of Zitelmann’s fundamentally will-theoretical ideas.245 p a r t v i , c h a p t e r 5 454 240 Hägerström, Stat och rätt, pp. 8-10; Objektiva rättens begrepp, pp. 22-27, 34-38, and 9394;“The Notion of Law,” pp. 81-88, 95-101, and 166-167;“Naturrätt?,” pp. 338-339. Cf. Zitelmann, Irrtum und Rechtsgeschäft, pp. 202, 220, and 224-225. 241 Hägerström, Objektiva rättens begrepp, pp. 38 and 128-132;“The Notion of Law,” pp. 98-99 and 208-213; “Naturrätt?,” p. 324. 242 Zitelmann, Irrtum und Rechtsgeschäft, pp. 200-229. 243 See, e.g., Jhering,“Unsere Aufgabe,”Jahrbücher für die Dogmatik des heutigen römischen und deutschen Privatrechts 1 (1857): pp. 17-18. 244 Zitelmann, Irrtum und Rechtsgeschäft, pp. 200-229. 245 Cf. Hägerström,“Naturrätt?,” p. 324. In which Hägerström sharply criticizes the ideas of “rättsgrund” (jural basis), that is, the idea that the state itself needs a jural basis for its right to punish delinquents.The issue addressed is one concerning the professed necessary legal prerequisites for the state’s right to prescribe punishments in penal law.
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