Hägerström’s last article “Om svikligt förtigande såsom straffbart efter 22:1 SL” (published shortly before death in July 1939) will serve as an example of Hägerström’s dogmatic positivism. In this article he conducted a typically dogmatic analysis of the question of whether or not fraudulent non-disclosure could be defined as a criminal action.The most interesting part of this article is his systematic analysis of the relationship between such fraudulent non-disclosure and its superior term, fraudulent conduct (which was criminal according to the Swedish Penal Code of the time). According to his analysis, fraudulent non-disclosure could not be considered to be a criminal offence under to Swedish law, especially if the academic lawyer in his analysis adhered to positive law as well as to the principles expressed in it and governing it. If the principle nulla poena sine lege poenali was part of Swedish penal law (which Hägerström considered to be the case), then jurisprudence could not, by use of its own methods, conclude that fraudulent non-disclosure was criminal, and on the basis of that conclusion construct a doctrine of criminal fraudulent concealment. According to the doctrine of sources and valid law, the penal code and prevalent doctrines of penal law, the only recourse left in bringing about the criminalization of fraudulent p a r t v i i i 654 tion of the state as ultimately laying down that which in the legal community is to be regarded as demanded in this respect, just as an ‘ought’ is considered in law.The question, again, how the constitution, and thereby the total body of law, has obtained practical force does not belong to jurisprudence, but to social psychology.”9 9 Hägerström, Stat och rätt, p. 8. My translation. Swedish:“Hvarifrån de i den ursprungliga statsförfattningen gifna rättsnormerna äga sin rättskraft, blir icke i rättsdogmatiken föremål för undersökning, emedan man i sådant fall skulle drifvas tillbaka till en annan rätt, hvarifrån denna hämtade sin giltighet. Utan denna vetenskap som endast har att analysera och systematisera innehållet i de rättsidéer, som taga sig uttryck i den positiva rätten, utgår från den ursprungliga statsförfattningen såsom ytterst bestämmande för hvad som i afseende å den gifna rättsgemenskapen är att betrakta som fordradt i det hänseende, hvari ett böra kommer i fråga för rätten. Den frågan åter, huru statsförfattningen och därmed rätten i det hela erhållit praktisk kraft, hör alldeles icke till jurisprudensen utan till socialpsykologien.”
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