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4th Annual Jurisprudence Lecture: "Resuscitating Scandinavian Legal Realism: Legal Knowledge as a New Object of Study", 26 Feb.

3 February 2010

Professor Henrik Palmer Olsen
On 26 February, at 1pm in the Coutts Lecture Theatre, Professor Henrik Palmer Olsen, Professor of Law at the University of Copenhagen will deliver the 4th Annual Jurisprudence Lecture. The title of the lecture is "Resuscitating Scandinavian Legal Realism: Legal Knowledge as a New Object of Study". The lecture will be from 1 to 2pm, and then there will be a discussion from 2 to 3pm.

It will be of interest to anybody interested in the philosophy of law and socio-legal studies. If you are not a member of the law school and wish to attend, could you please contact Dr Patrick Capps in the School of Law.

Abstract: "Resuscitating Scandinavian Legal Realism: Legal Knowledge as a New Object of Study"

In 1936 the Danish legal philosopher Alf Ross published a critique of Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law. Essentially the critique was aimed at Kelsen's formalism, and Alf Ross argued that the study of law must include a study of the social conditions under which legal norms acquire their validity. Ross however never provided adequate conceptual tools for the kind of scholarship he advocated, and his relatively naive emotivist approach to social normativity was severely criticised by Herbert Hart - although Hart on closer inspection seem to be as vulnerable to Ross critique as Kelsen is. In this talk I wish to resuscitate the basic idea behind Scandinavian Legal Realism - that an understanding of the nature of law must be gained through a synthesis of doctrinal analysis and an analysis of the social forces and interests that fuels the doctrine. My aim is to introduce a new concept: "Legal Knowledge" and to show how the ambitions of Alf Ross might be more persuasively executed by studying how Legal Knowledge is formed and used.

Please contact Dr Patrick Capps for further information.

Further information:

About the Annual Jurisprudence Lecture. Each year the Law School invites a renowned legal philosopher to come to speak about contemporary jurisprudential issues. Previous speakers have included Professor Stanley Paulson (William Gardiner Hammond Professor of Law at the University of Washington, Missouri), Professor John Gardner (Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford) and Professor AWB Simpson (Charles F. and Edith J. Clyne Professor of Law, University of Michigan).