only has legal relevance if it can be deduced from positive legal rules expressly prescribing a duty to compensate for damages caused in the case of a violation of some right or rule of law, but illegality as such does not necessarily flow from the action itself. Accordingly, what illegality describes is the legal consequences of a specific legal norm, thus illegality is posterior to the rules of law, rather than prior. Hence, illegality, in both penal law and tort law, simply implies that a person’s actions, according to positive law, either, or both, give rise to penal liability or indemnity liability.326 To endow illegality with a causative meaning, making it anterior in the explanation of a rule of law, is thus not only contradictory vis-à-vis the rules of law, but also false and uninformative. Thyrén’s reply to Lundstedt was swift and unforgiving, and from that point on, the temperature and the intensity of the debate escalated quickly.327 In general, Lundstedt appears to have been perceived as being a serious threat to penal jurisprudence per se, as evidenced by his critique of the fundamentals of penal jurisprudence being ill-received by scholars of penal law. However, his intention was far from being malign. The main purpose of his critique was the abolition of certain jurisprudential doctrines of penal law, not the abolition of jurisprudence in its entirety, for jurisprudence was not a lost cause; on the contrary, it could be salvaged, provided that it and its practitioners underwent a change of heart and adopted a more realistic methodology than that of the prevailing scholasticism.328 a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 481 326 E. g. Lundstedt, Grundlinjer I, p. 41; Rätten och samhället, pp. 24-29; Hägerström, Objektiva rättens begrepp, pp. 138-148;“The Notion of Law,” pp. 222-234;“Naturrätt?,” p. 338;“Principundersökning,” pp. 209-211 and 220-221;“Fundamental Problems,” pp. 348-351 and 360-362; “Svikligt förtigande,” pp. 325-326. 327 Lundstedt,“Replik till professor Thyrén.”; Rätten och samhället;Thyrén, Den moderna straffrättens grundåskådningar: anmärkningar vid prof. A.V. Lundstedts skrift “En principinledning” etc.: (Uppsala 1920); Anmärkningar vid en skrift av professor A.V. Lundstedt i Uppsala: “Till frågan om rätten och samhället” (Uppsala 1921). 328 Lundstedt, Principinledning, pp. 5-8.
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