Critical attitude of Axel Hägerström was enthusiastically carried by his follower Vilhelm Lundstedt, who, according to Scandinavian legal realism, sought to make jurisprudence a science based on verifiable facts. He sharply criticized any inclusion of metaphysics into law, especially considerations of justice. In V. Lundstedt’s opinion, law is an intricate machinery which is kept going by means of psychological impulses of man, his senses, instincts and emotions and which is controlled by legislation, administration of law, courts, administrative activities on the part of persons elected or appointed to fulfill certain functions in society and the application of some other measures of coercion. Traditional legal theories, including positivism and sociological jurisprudence, V. Lundstedt considered to be unscientific and completely irrational, based on ideological conceptions unrelated to verifiable facts. According to him, concepts of traditional jurisprudence do not correspond to the real world and exist only as feelings in our mind: these "false ideas" can only be used as "labels" denoting certain realities. However, V. Lundtstedt’s concept consisted not only of criticism but also offered constructive elements for improving jurisprudence and legal method in a more natural-scientific sense. Instead of the rejected ideologized "method of justice", that uses only different concepts of objectively non-existent justice, V. Lundstedt offers his "method of social welfare", that is understood as the encouragement in the best possible way of that which people in general actually strive to attain. According to this method the reason for the existence and operation of law is the satisfaction of social needs: law creates new and changes old legal relations for a social purpose, that is, for the benefit of society, or "social welfare". Despite V. Lundstedt’s rather extensive presentation and passionate defense of constructed method, it caused reasonable criticism regarding its originality, sufficient elaboration and coherence. Analysis of the content of the method of "social welfare" and its criticism in relation to utilitarianism, the falsity of the highlighted human strivings, insufficiency of the method in some judicial cases, as well as the impossibility of solving simultaneously theoretical and practical problems, raises doubts about the success of V. Lundstedt’s desirable "basic reshaping of legal thinking", but inspires for further researches in the field of law.
