Two Classics

The idea of a good theoretician being lacking in practical affairs is an old one, as the Latin used in the title of this chapter shows. Following this idea, the thesis could also be translated as follows: A practising lawyer can never be a theoretician.

The first clear challenge to this thesis was formulated by the Swedish scholar DavidNehrman-Ehrenstrale (1695-1769; later Nehrman) in 1729. The same line of thought, although with less clarity, was represented by the Finnish classic Matthias Calonius a few decades later. Nehrman's ideas are worthy of special attention because, in a way, he marks the beginning of an important turn - i.e., the turn towards the Nordic pragmatism in the doctrinal study of law. Nehrmann's text book was also used in Finland, at Turku University (founded 1640), due to the fact that Finland was a part of the Swedish Kingdom until 1809, when Finland became a Grand Duchy of Russia until Finland's independence in 1917. Even dur­ing the Russian period, Swedish was the official language, and the main parts of the Swedish Constitution were valid in Finland.

The development in the Swedish, as well as the Finnish, DSL did not happen through coincidence but through following a thoroughly considered research atti­tude. This is why the old classics might have something to say that seems to have been overlooked in the current focus on the present. Even though we might not learn anything from history, a glance into the past helps us to identify ourselves, to under­stand where we have come from and, thus, why we are like we are. In addition to this, analysis of the change in the doctrinal study of law through the early classics offers an instrument for recognising features of change as well as the relationship between theory and practice.

Let us begin with a few of Matthias Calonius' ideas. I am not striving for a doctrinal-historical analysis since my attention is focused on the title of this chapter. Describing someone as the “father of the Finnish doctrinal study of law” sounds formulaic, almost phrase-like. Still, this epithet comes in handy when discussing Matthias Calonius (1738-1817), for it expresses not just genuine appreciation but also respect toward the work he did to lift early Finnish legal thought to a European level (Calonius, 19). When working as a teacher at the university, Calonius was the sole member of the faculty of law (at the Academy of Turku) for a long time, which meant that his direct influence on the legal thought of his time was profound, probably greater than the influence of any other scholar working as a university professor after him.

The date of presentation for Calonius' published lectures has been given as 12.4.1810, but he had already lectured on the same issues in the Academy of Turku in the late 1700s. The lectures were first published in 1908 and not only dealt with civil law, but criminal, procedural, church and sea law as well.

By current standards, the lectures were not very original. Calonius took advan­tage of many Swedish sources without referring to them with any clarity. He especially used the texts of Olof Rabenius, a professor at the Uppsala University, using them to a much larger extent than the specific Rabenius references in the lectures show (Calonius, 41, 55, 134, 149, 204, 226, 234). Nonetheless, this was a common habit at the time, and we should not lay blame on Matthias Calonius for the lack of references (Bjorne 1980, 117). What was more significant was that Calonius lectured in Latin, and once Latin lost its place as the principal language of teaching in the 19th century, it started to become strange to new generations of lawyers.

The theoretical background represented by Calonius - i.e., the 18th century thinking on natural law - was also forced to give way to newer thoughts. In the early 1800s, the notes made at Calonius' lectures were still part of the unofficial study material for law students, but, little by little, Calonius started to be forgotten as a teacher and a researcher.

After Calonius' time, teaching was mainly done in Swedish, because that was the lingua franca of the cultural elite in Finland at that time. It was not until 1866 that Associate Professor Wilhelm Lavonius gave the first lectures in the Finnish language at the University of Helsinki (Kangas and Timonen 1998, vii). The lectures were based on the imperial lan­guage statute of 1865, and on the decision made by the university's council on the grounds of this statute. It can be pointed out that Elias Lonnroth, the father of the Finnish national epos “Kalevala”, had already given lectures on the peculiar features of legal language in the 1861-1862 term, but these lectures cannot really be said to have been jurisprudential.

From a doctrinal-historical viewpoint, Calonius' fate has been everything but obliv­ious. On the contrary, the publication of the second edition of “The lectures on civil law” in Finnish (1998) has shown that interest in Calonius and his work has gathered momentum in the recent past. For Finland, Calonius was a mediating link to both European thought and the tradition of Swedish doctrinal study of law. This is quite clearly shown once we place Calonius into the context of a longer cultural tradition in Sweden and Finland.

Rabenius himself is not the only significant name. Another important charac­ter in Calonius' background is Nehrman. In his lectures, Calonius has 17 direct references to Nehrman, which is the same as his references to Rabenius. Due to this, it is not unreasonable to claim that Matthias Calonius was the successor to Nehrman's systematic thinking and also its developer in Finland, which is all the more important once we notice that Nehrman's largest merits were in the presen­tation of the brand new Swedish civil code of 1734, while it was Calonius' task to interpret and systematically present the code of 1734.

Even though Matthias Calonius was forgotten in the circles of students as well as practising lawyers, his thoughts remain a part of the legal cultural tradition in Finland. An innumerable number of legal concepts, all the way to the very basic terms, are still in use in the doctrinal study of law, 200 years after Calonius' lectures. There lies the enduring value of Matthias Calonius' life's work. We must remember that Calonius was not only a scientist and a teacher. He also worked, among other tasks, as a member of the Supreme Court and as a procurator, having a significant influence in the development of Finnish judicial life.

To get a better idea of the intellectual life of Calonius, and of the early 1800s in general, we must take a closer look at the achievements of his mentor, David Nehrman-Ehrenstrale, in the Swedish doctrinal study of law. They expose a single important difference in Calonius' and Nehrman's attitude toward scientific research and the higher education based on it. Nehrman was 150 years ahead of his Finnish colleagues in many respects, which had a natural explanation.