problems - that is, unless the doctrines of legal theory are accepted as being a source of law. If this is the case then the metaphysical premisses and findings of the doctrines of jurisprudence will invariably affect the practice of law, as it will apply these doctrines as part of the sources of law in order to solve a practical issue of one type or another. Hence, the activities of jurisprudence are invariably related to the actual or assumed metaphysics of law understood either, or both, as being the formal philosophical basis for valid jurisprudential argumentation and the material philosophical basis of law proper, as criteria for truth and validity for jurisprudence, or as a direct source of law. In Part I Introduction, the plan for this study is laid out and the balance between the philosophical and the historical aspects of the investigation is defined. For the general theoretical aspects of this investigation, see Part I Introduction. In general, it is the study of academic law (jurisprudence, legal science, legal theory, and so on) and its status in the legal discourse that constitutes the focus of attention and the central theme in the collected works of Axel Hägerström, published and unpublished alike. Since a reoccurring opinion is that the foundations to large parts of what we today call a legal system are to be found in the sources of Roman law (an idea, incidentally, to which Hägerström subscribes) it is appropriate for this investigation to start in the era crucial for law and legal studies - in ancient Rome. It is in Roman law that we first find a system of rules firm enough to serve as impartial principles intended to govern social conduct.2 To the historical, philosophical, and dogmatic study of law, the difference between ancient Roman and ancient Greek notions of law is in the notion of the nature of law itself. Is what we call law a set of firm rules, or not? What makes a rule of law? Who makes law? One distinct feature distinguishing the Roman and Greek notions of law from one another is that Roman law was imbued with a religiously binding character ultimately sanctionp a r t v i i 562 2 Hägerström, Magistratische Ius, pp. 80-81.
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