part ii • legal cultures • jørn øyrehagen sunde explained. It is in this context we must read Friedman’s article from 1969, the first step in treating the notion of legal culture in a scholarly fashion, and the reason why Friedman deserves his pioneer status in the field. In this essay, I explore legal culture against the background of Friedman’s 1969 article. I give my own view on the subject, look at the scepticism of legal culture as a concept (a wariness I would argue stems from a certain confusion about perspectives), and indicate how legal culture can serve as an analytical tool – complete with model – for comparative law and legal history, for dialogue, and for analysis. Some years ago, I gave a lecture to second-year law students at the University in Regensburg in southern Germany on the subject of Nordic legal culture. After the first 45 minutes, we took a brief break before the second part. During the break, a student came up to me and asked, ‘Not to be rude, but what’s it like, living in such an immature legal system?’ I knew immediately what the student meant, since I had ended the first part of my lecture with the strong position of fairness in Nordic law, and specifically in the law of my home country, Norway. In German law, setting aside legislated law because it is unfair is the archetypal sign of the fall of rule of law – of ‘an immature legal system’. It does not happen often in Norwegian law either, as most of the time legislated law is simply applied law, tweaked to avoid unfair court decisions. However, on very rare occasions bending the law is not an option, and fairness might prevail over legislated law. I was intrigued by the student’s question, though. I suggested that was the point of my lecture: that law as a social phenomenon is not mature or immature, or right and wrong, but – because law is a question of culture, and culture varies by place and time – a question of whether the expectations of law in a society are met. In Norwegian legal culture, there is an expectation that the law will be fair, and that courts will bend, and even abandon, unfair legislated law to achieve a fair result when the stakes are high. My attempt to explain this to the student failed, though, and 124 Legal appliance, legal analysis
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