is particularly critical of:The first is Karl Bergbohm’s reification of the entire system of positive law; and the second is Hans Kelsen’s pure theory of law, which first reduces positive law to legislation and then reificates what is left.490 The purpose of these two varieties of legal positivism seems to have an underlying desire to create a perfect object for legal science, which would allow its conclusions to be truly scientific and objective, whereupon legal science would become a truly objectively binding source of law.491 Regardless of the point of departure, their desires to create perfect theories of law and similarly perfect legal systems obfuscated several vital aspects of law. To begin with, Bergbohm, his basic assumption is the fiction that positive law exists as a perfect system, which in turn validates every legal conclusion.This assumption, however, does seem to constitute more than a mere fiction to Bergbohm.According to him, positive law must be understood as being the reification of the dogmatic fiction of a self-sufficient system of law, which he in turn elevated to the status of actual reality.492 This reification of a fiction furthermore leads Bergbohm to the conclusion that every legal conclusion automatically gains validity, provided that the conclusion is logically sound, and does so by virtue of the fact that the system of positive law, due to its perfection, in itself materially contains as well as ordains every forthcoming legal conclusion.493 For how could Bergbohm’s assumption otherwise be upheld? Finally, there are considerable similarities between his extreme reificatory positivism and the so-called Begriffsjurisprudenz(the latter according to which the system of positive law p a r t v i , c h a p t e r 8 534 490 This concise characterization of the roots to what is called Nordic legal sociology (sic!) has been borrowed fromVerdross, Abendl. Rechtsph., pp. 182-183. See also Part V, Chapter 3, and Part VI, Chapter 4 above. 491 See, e.g., Hägerström (1931) for an extensive critique of the idea that jurisprudence was an objectively binding source of law. 492 See for example Bergbohm, Jurisprudenz und Rechtsphilosophie: kritische Abhandlungen, pp. 384-388. Cf. Hägerström, Stat och rätt, pp. 22, for his description of Bergbohm’s legal theory as an expression of mediaeval conceptual realism. See also Kaufmann, Rechtsphilosophie, pp. 145-150. 493 Bergbohm, Jurisprudenz und Rechtsphilosophie: kritische Abhandlungen, p. 73.
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