Special Workshop Abstract

One of the most ambitious programmes proposals for guaranteeing the systematic nature of the legal order was proffered by the German 19^th century Begriffsjurisprudenz (conceptual legal dogmatics), first in the field of private law and then, towards the end of the century, even in state law. The German-influenced school of conceptual legal dogmatics had a profound impact in Continental Europe, including the Nordic countries. In Finland, it maintained a dominant position well into the 1950s; it was only the criticism of the analytical trend which toppled the Begriffsjurisprudenz from its position. In the first part of the paper, the main tenets of especially the state law variant of the Begriffsjurisprudenz are briefly presented and, after that, their analytical criticism is examined. The criticism focussed especially on three issues: the conception of legal concepts as universally valid, as expressing the immutable core of all law; the assumption of an inherent organic unity of the legal order; and the method of legal induction.

At least in German-oriented legal cultures, the main task of creating and maintaining the coherence of the legal order falls to the so-called general doctrines (Allgemeine Lehren) of different fields of law. Their role in the functioning of the legal system also attests to the position of legal scholarship as one of the legal practices which continuously produce and reproduce the law as a normative phenomenon and thus constitute its main “ontological support”. The division of labour between various legal practices in guaranteeing the law’s coherence and the overall role of the general doctrines in the legal system constitute the final topics of the paper. The role of the general doctrines is examined through the following grouping of their tasks: systematising, coherence-creating task; pedagogical task; constitutive-epistemological task; heuristic task; and argumentative-normative task.