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18 Ratio Juris 1 (2005)

handle is hein.journals/raju18 and id is 1 raw text is: Ratio Juris. Vol. 18 No. 1 March 2005 (1-15) The Philosophy of Scandinavian Legal Realism JES BJARUP Abstract. The jurisprudential movement known as Scandinavian Legal Realism was founded by the Swedish philosopher Axel Hagerstr6m and the Danish philosopher and jurist Alf Ross in order to destroy the distorting influence of metaphysics upon legal thinking and to provide the secure philosophical foundation for scientific knowledge of the law. I shall present Hagerstr6m's philosophical theory and argue that he is committed to the metaphysical view that the world in time and space con- sists of causal regularities between things and events devoid of any values that is related to his epistemological view that what there is can be known by experience. Higerstr6m's philosophy advances a naturalistic approach that conceives the posi- tive law as a system of rules in terms of behavioural regularities among human beings and legal knowledge as an empirical inquiry into the causal relations between legal rules and human behaviour. This approach is followed by his pupils, the Swedish lawyers A. V. Lundstedt and Karl Olivecrona, whereas Ross appeals to logical positivism. The naturalistic approach should be taken seriously since it leaves no room for the normativity of the law and for legal knowledge in terms of reasons for belief and action. 1. Introduction The jurisprudential movement known as Scandinavian Legal Realism was founded by the Swedish philosopher Axel Hagerstrom (1868-1939), who held the chair of practical philosophy at the University of Uppsala from 1911 to his retirement in 1933, and the Danish philosopher and jurist Alf Ross (1899-1979), who held chairs in law at the University of Copenhagen from 1933 until his retirement in 1970. They shared the view that it is vital to destroy the distorting influences of metaphysics upon scientific thinking in general and legal thinking in particular in order to pave the way for the scientific understanding of the importance of law and legal science for the life of human beings within a state. Hagerstrom's philosophy informs his jurisprudential approach in terms of a naturalistic approach to law and legal knowledge that is further pursued by his pupils, the Swedish legal scholars @ Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden 02148, USA.

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