Hägerström is of the not too unorthodox opinion that too strict a literal interpretation of a statute only leads to partial success.559 Trade and social production do in fact require that the aims and purposes of the law in question, and the interests that the law is intended to safeguard, should exert a decisive influence on the activities of the courts.That is, the courts’ interpretation and application of the laws, and their aims and purposes, should also determine and guide the activities of private citizens. For according to Hägerström, the opposite, namely to let the activities of the courts be guided by an adherence to the exact letter of the law, results in an adherence to the law that in many cases appears to be unbalanced and thus erratic and idiosyncratic, at least if compared with the demands that society places upon the judiciary’s application of the law.560 This means that there actually exists a public demand that the spirit of the laws (should) guide the authorities’ application of the law. So what we have here is a method of objective teleology deriving its legitimacy from public demands for consistency and predictability.561 However, this does not absolve the jurist from his fealty to the legislator, or from his deference to the positively expressed intentions of the historical legislator; this is especially the case when the literal and grammatical interpretation of law leads to ambiguous or vague results.562 Accordingly, the judge is authorized to transgress the strictly linguistic boundaries of the statute when the need arises. This happens under very specific circumstances, for example, when the literal interpretation of a statute leaves the scope of that statute too narrow (resulting in so-called legal loopholes), or when the literal application of a statute leads to unjust results or p a r t v i , c h a p t e r 8 554 8 . 5. 3 inte rpretat ion according to the sp i ri t of the law 559 Hägerström, “Begreppet gällande rätt,” p. 86. 560 Hägerström, “Begreppet gällande rätt,” p. 86. 561 Ibid.: pp. 86-88; Hägerström, “Svikligt förtigande,” pp. 325-326 and 331-334. 562 Hägerström,“Begreppet gällande rätt,” pp. 86-89; Objektiva rättens begrepp, pp. 16-25; “The Notion of Law,” pp. 74-85.
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