Original scientific paper
Morals of Legal Monism
Ivan Padjen
orcid.org/0000-0001-7606-2337
; Faculty of Law, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia
Abstract
Marijan Pavčnik’s Legal Theory is an outstanding work on the foundations of law written by an internationally renowned author. It is of special relevance to Croatian readers as an incentive to recognize and rectify the one-sidedness of Croatian legal theory. The function of history as theory in Croatian legal thought (section 1.1) explains why the Croatian mainstream legal theory has adopted an integral conception of law but leaned towards sociologization and even fully fledged naturalization of legal science (section 1.2) with consequences for both legal education (section 1.3) and legal practice (section 1.4). Analytical legal theory, which is preoccupied with the objective meaning of law-creating acts is typical of the Slovenian tradition (section 2.1), within which Pavčnik has written his Legal Theory (section 2.2). The following tenets of Pavčnik’s Legal Theory, which are typically analytical and – in one way or another – monistic, are instructive for Croatian legal theory: a sound legal theory is monistic in that it is a historical synthesis rather than an original creation that ignores or bypasses earlier theories (section 2.2.1); law is a meaning of social action that can be recognized by the normative method, which is monistic in so far as other methods can change and amend but not replace it (section 2.2.2); law is monistic in that there can be only one single legal order (section 2.2.4). Despite the differences, Croatian and Slovenian legal theory may have more in common by both being rooted, Croatian via general legal history and Slovenian via Kelsen’s pure theory, in Hegel’s philosophy.
Keywords
Marijan Pavčnik; legal theory (Slovenia: Croatia); analytical legal theory; legal monism
Hrčak ID:
169097
URI
Publication date:
7.11.2016.
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