Hägerström’s analysis of law focuses mainly on the issue of law’s legitimacy, but particular concern is directed at the legitimacy of legal science, especially in its function as a source of law. What is especially characteristic of Hägerström’s analysis is the doctrinaire form of his approach, namely his aspiration to separate clearly science and scientific arguments from politics and political arguments.421 It was in this specific aspect that Sterzel’s analysis failed. For what Sterzel attempted to demonstrate was that a certain act of omission, fraudulent non-disclosure, constituted an act belonging to the class of criminal acts of commission punishable according to the Swedish Penal Code Chapter 22, Section 1.422 However, two facts precluded any such attempts, on the one hand, the prevailing doctrines of penal jurisprudence, that is, the principle of legality and the prohibition of analogies, which prohibit any such constructive interpretations of penal statutes, and on the other, the Swedish Penal Code that clearly stipulated that the intended conduct must invariably be of an active nature in order to be subject to punishment. In other words, acts of omission were not punishable according to this specific section of the penal code.423 In conclusion, it is safe to argue that Hägerström’s analyses of the ideas of jurisprudence in general, focus on the possible authority of legal science has to influence the material content of the legal order.What Hägerström argues is that jurisprudence only has such authority if it adheres not only to the principles of law but also to the general principles of legal science, especially since any deviation from principle in either of these respects will invariably lead to conclusions and findings of an unsatisfactory and a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 509 7. 1 the leg i t imacy and authori ty of juri sprudence, and juri sprudent ial doctrine 421 E.g., ibid.: pp. 316, 326 and334-335. Here Hägerström treats the highly arbitrary and sophistic effects of certain methods of legal science. 422 Ibid.: pp. 311-312. 423 Ibid.: pp. 318-320.
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