Instrumental in the understanding of Hägerström’s legal theory is his analysis of the relationship between modern jurisprudence and natural law doctrine, because when he defines this relationship he returns to a leading premiss of his legal theory, namely that metaphysics is still common in modern jurisprudence. In the analysis of penal jurisprudence, Hägerström puts two hypotheses to the test. The first hypothesis was that recurrent in modern legal thought were ideas that gave the legal concepts and theories an indeterminate relationship towards positive law, notwithstanding the fact that modern dogmatic jurisprudence claimed itself to have a purely positivistic foundation.333 His second hypothesis constituted a specification of his first hypothesis. He asked whether or not it was the case that positive law and jurisprudence were based upon a substratum borrowed from natural law - namely, the supposition that there existed a rational normative order that determines the content of the state’s rules and laws.334 This incidentally, corresponds amicably with the following subject matter on his investigation into penal jurisprudence, namely the various theories of the state’s right to punish and the fundamental basis of that right.The direct issue at hand is not only whether or not penal jurisprudence directly makes use of concepts and notions inherited from natural law or not, but whether penal jurisprudence applies notions from natural law as if they determine positive jurisprudence, even though in reality they do not.335 Hägerström’s second hypothesis is interesting since it explicitly removes the ideas of natural law from the legal to the political discourse, and does so on account of the fact that if the ideas of a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 483 6 . 4 . 3 the re lat ionshi p betwe en mode rn juri sprudence and natural law 333 Ibid.: pp. 322, 324, and 336-341. 334 Ibid.: p. 322. 335 Ibid.: p. 324.
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