determine objectively what the spirit of the law in the specific case is, in other words, what is the good that the law in question is supposed to uphold and protect. In any case, it is only possible to uphold the objective aims of the laws in question when the judge respects the letter of the law or statute (provided that the meaning of the statute is unambiguous) and only departs from the letter of the law when, and if, he is sure that the legislator would have passed another statute, if the legislator had known what the judge knows.571This means that the determination of the law’s telos is restricted to that specific telos that can be revealed and determined through an interpretation and analysis of the statute itself, or of positive law.572 To Hägerström, legal positivism did not restrict law as a system to any greater extent than to a certain group of rules given in a non-metaphysical spatio-temporal context. Hägerström’s understanding of legal positivism thus allows a pluralistic doctrine of legal sources (provided that the sources in question actually exist in the natural sense of the word) as well as a pluralistic doctrine of methodology (provided that the included methods do not deviate from what is epistemologically acceptable). Despite the logical openness of the teleological method, Hägerström’s outline of a teleological method of statute interpretation contradicted neither the principles of legal positivism nor his general scientific theory, or legal theory or theory of legal science. My initial suggestion in this Chapter, namely that Hägerström’s outline of a teleological method of statute interpretation might contradict his general principles of legal science and be enigmatic, is thus only possible to verify if the will-theory of law itself a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 557 571 Hägerström, “Begreppet gällande rätt,” pp. 86-88. 572 Ibid; Hägerström, Objektiva rättens begrepp, pp. 18-19; “The Notion of Law,” pp. 7677. 8 . 6 conclus ions : legal methodology and theory of law
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