Legal realism

The term legal realism refers to a direction of legal philosophy and legal theory.

The legal realism - as well as the legal positivism - anti-metaphysical. Attaches particular importance to the legal realism to the consideration of the right of the outside influencing factors, in particular the social facts. The legal realism is thus a jurisprudential pragmatism and has simultaneously connecting lines to the sociology of law on.

The legal realism views the law as a means to regulate the conditions of life. Law is thus expressly recognized as a means of controlling social behavior.

Since the legal realism formulated no metaphysical justification of law, he is closely associated with the empiricist thinking and has established itself for this reason, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, where the modern empirical thinking in particular with the mechanistic understanding of the law Thomas Hobbes took his output.

The modern quite realistic flow attributable to so-called Legal Realism means the law as dynamic and therefore historically open process of authoritative and effective decisions than not vorhistorisch stabilized de facto coordination each other potentially conflicting validity claims. This is mainly used in the application of international law (international law ) for expression. This is not understood as a closed normative system, but rather as a fact certain process of adjustment of validity claims, the systematization in terms of a closed legal system - is not accessible - the state comparable.

Influential were particularly American legal realism (main representative: Karl Llewellyn ) in the 20th century and the Scandinavian Legal Realism ( Alf Ross, Karl Olivecrona ).