ON THE PURPOSE AND FUNCTIONS OF LEGAL‑DOGMATIC RESEARCH (CONTINENTAL TRADITION)
ON THE PURPOSE AND FUNCTIONS OF LEGAL‑DOGMATIC RESEARCH (CONTINENTAL TRADITION)

Summary/Abstract: The present text discusses the role of a special kind of research into criminal law in the continental legal tradition, for which the term “legal-dogmatic research” has been adopted and used by many scholars from outside the common law system and which is described in more detail below, its place among other scholarly disciplines, and its significance for legal practice. The concept of this “legal-dogmatic research” can be understood in two ways. Based on the first approach, it is perceived as an abstract study of law independent on the legal rules in force at a given time and place. In this sense, it appears as synonymous to terms used in the German language: Doktrin or Lehre (study). In the second sense, this research is seen as a study of existing law (lex lata) – and nothing else. It differs from other areas of jurisprudence in that it does not strive to be universally valid, but is confined to a time and place. The article presents a point of view in the light of which this research aims to render the normative system coherent and comprehensible, i.e. to establish the correct meaning of the law by clarifying and systematizing it. In this context, the author shows that the purpose of legal scholarship is to reveal and subsequently to conceptualize reality. At the same time, the importance of investigation of the law as it is (legal-dogmatic research) is by no means limited to the hermeneutical analysis of the legal text, but that it faces equally ambitious tasks, such as the development of criminal law and the need to find material legitimacy for the use of coercion by the state against citizens.

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