non-disclosure, would be legislation.10 This would be an option, according to positive law and the doctrine of legal sources, available only to the governing political body, and not to academic lawyers - no matter how important or pressing such criminalization was considered to be.The article is therefore interesting as it also explicitly shows the importance that Hägerström placed on separating conclusions and analyses de lege lata from conclusions and analyses de lege ferenda in jurisprudence. The article also shows the restrictions actually inherent in legal positivism when it comes to the validity and reach of its scientific arguments. Such scientific arguments are valid only if they adhere to the postulates of legal positivism and the doctrine of the sources of law and to the accepted methods for interpreting and supplementing a given part of the law - for example, the principle of legality in penal law and the prohibition on analogies in penal law. So any alterations to penal law, going beyond that which is possible to infer from the penal code, are in fact reserved for the legislator. Furthermore, it is only those opinions of jurisprudence that are well foundedand validly argued for that are allowed to supplement the law. In short, Hägerström concluded that the main principle of jurisprudence should be that legal science must be positivistic through and through when establishing its findings, concepts, and dogmas.11 A closer look at “Om svikligt förtigande såsom straffbart efter 22:1 SL” shows that Hägerström, in essence, still adhered to the non-sociological understanding of jurisprudence described in Stat och rätt (1904). In his philosophy and theories of law and legal science, the terms real and objective, as well as realism, thus have other denotations than sociology and other forms of empiricism, a denotation that definitely differs, for example, from Alf Ross’ predictive theory (which, however,makes its predictions on the basis of the judges’ analyses and subsequent applications a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 655 10 Hägerström, “Svikligt förtigande,” pp. 334-335. 11 Ibid.: pp. 311-335.
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