Legal Validity as a Psychological Fact: Uppsala School in an Intellectual Context of the Continental Legal Realism

Abstract

There are two traditions of determining the foundation of legal validity — metaphysical and anti-metaphysical. At the beginning of the 20th century the anti-metaphysical tradition was supplemented by psychological realism, which was developed in the framework of the Uppsala School and the psychological school of Leon Petrażycki. It is possible to trace the common line of reasoning on the problem of legal validity within Continental or psychological legal realism: from Petrażycki (and his students) and Axel Hägerström (and his students, including Alf Ross) to Enrico Pattaro. Psychological legal realism is an approach to law that can be characterized by 1) an orientation toward the study of law in the context of facts of psychophysical reality; 2) the idea of the psychological nature of law; 3) recognition of the authoritative-mystical nature and objectification of legal experiences; 4) the irreducibility of law to the behavioral aspect; etc.The term "Uppsala School of Legal Realism" denotes the theoretical legal position of scholars from Uppsala — Hagerström and his most faithful students, Anders Vilhelm Lundstedt and Karl Olivekrona — within the framework of a broader Scandinavian legal realism as part of the continental realistic tradition. The philosophical foundations of the Uppsala School of Legal Realism include: rejection of subjectivism and metaphysics, naturalism, non-cognitivism. This school paid special attention to questions on the possibility of scientific knowledge about law, the construction of a value-neutral theory, and the search for reliable methodological foundations for the science of law. The revolt against subjectivism and metaphysics led to the assertion that there is — and can be the subject of scientific knowledge — only one reality, namely spatio-temporal, psychophysical. Since legal concepts do not directly correspond to the facts of such a reality, they are considered as illusions and even magical formulas, which, however, are based on actual psychological facts and have an effect on people’s consciousness.In the framework of the Uppsala School from a realistic point of view law appears as a machinery of coercion, as a factual order based on the organized social force. Within that order the rules of law are independent imperatives and motives of behavior, which have a suggestive, binding effect on the consciousness and behavior of people. The validity of law is determined by the power of organized social coercion and is regarded as a complex phenomenon of the people’s inner world. As a complex psychical fact, legal validity is considered a psychological self-binding engendered by the physical coercion machinery in action and the influence of cultural, social and even biological factors.