tem into a totality. A further ramification of the revolutions of philosophy was: “that legal scholars for the first time became conscious of the relation between what should be and what actually was, between the rules of law and social reality.”181 In other words, legal scholars became aware of the distinction between lex lata and lex ferenda, an insight that, taken together with the novel evolutionary view of law, profoundly affected their selfunderstanding, especially with regard to the relativity of legal and scientific arguments.182 The difference between the developments of France and Germany also reveals itself in fields other than the purely philosophical, as, for instance, with regard to the law as such and the doctrine of sources. For while France by the beginning of the 19th Century had conquered the problem of the external disparity of the sources of law through a successful codification of law, Germany on the other hand, lacking the political unity of France, did not codify.183 Accordingly, the issue became one of developing a method that: a) could help jurists to conquer the legal chaos of the fictive political unity of Germany; and b) build a coherent system of (German) law, which became a legal, scientific, and political necessity.As mentioned above, codification also became an issue in Swedish legal debate and legislation, as the Swedish government from1815 onwards had several committees investigating, as well drafting proposals on civil and penal codes.However, for various reasons, mostly political opposition from the peasantry and nobility, the civil code was never enacted,while the Penal Code became Swedish law in 1864.The outcome of this failure to codify also affected Swedish legal theory, as the Sweda ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 609 181 Ibid., p. 285. My italics. 182 Ibid., pp. 283-285. 183 Coing, Privatrecht 2, pp. 39-41; Schlosser,Grundzüge, pp. 124-126; Thibaut und Savigny, Stern, ed., pp. 25-33. 2 . 2 . 2 . 1 Doctrine of sources:The Practical Downfall of Natural Law
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=