of the rules of law themselves is of lesser, if any, importance than the formal validity of the jurisprudential conclusions and the production of law by means of legal doctrine.This constitutes a very clear demarcation between the Uppsala School, as well as every other positivistic theory of law, and different theories of natural law. In principle, the positivistic tradition treats the issue of the intrinsic right or wrong and validity or invalidity of the rules of law themselves as a legal non-issue.The only context in which the validity of a rule can be questioned is when the rule is created through either, or both, an analysis and application of a prior rule of law,8 or when the rule in question is the product of what the Historical School would call Juristenrecht.The specific point that makes the issue problematic is the vagueness of legal validity, as well as the dialectics signifying the relationship between existing rules and the formulation of new rules of law through the application of prior rules - in other words, the relationship between law, judge-made law, and legal custom. In this respect the ideas of Hägerström’s legal theory shows considerable affinity with those of the Historical School of jurisprudence. Since most of Hägerström’s philosophical and legal output deals with metaphysical issues, it is appropriate to make use of the issue of the metaphysics of law as an overriding principle of investigation when setting the historical backdrop to the guiding thesis of this study.The primary reason for applying the metaphysics of legal science as the guiding principle is that throughout the history of legal science the presence of metaphysical arguments in the legal discourse has constituted the touchstone determining both the validity of law itself as well as the intrinsic truth value of scientific assertions and conclusions, and has done so positively (in natural law theory) as well as negatively (in legal positivism).9 We begin with natural law. a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 565 8 Harris, Law and Legal Science:An Inquiry into the Concepts “Legal Rule”and“Legal System”, pp. 107-131. 9 See Schröder, Recht alsWissenschaft, pp. 168-180 and 244-269.
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