Harmonization or Separation? Deep Structures in Nordic legal Cultures

Ten years ago Pierre Legrand published his frequently quoted article with the provocative title European Legal Systems are not Converging. 1 The thesis he defended in this article was that the legal systems of the member states in the European Union due to their epistemological backgrounds actually were more diverging than converging. Historical and cultural phenomena explained his statement. As long as the legal education, the concept of national law schools, and the professional careers of the lawyers demonstrated such obviously different concepts in the European countries regarding systematization, argumentation and history, as long would also the legal systems in Europe diverge. The different legal cognitive structures are demonstrating a strong contra force to the merging legal system within the European communities. Pierre Legrand‘s thesis may be right, questionized or even wrong, but his statement is interesting and important, and it has had an important impact for the discourses and constructs regarding law and jurisprudence in the Nordic countries in the late modernity. In my view our time, the late modernity of the 21 st century, is a new time of romanticism to a great extent similar with that of the early 19 th century. 2 Old archetypes of law are rediscovered, contextualization of the law gives new historical and cultural perspectives of law, and deep structures of law are again made visible not only within legal science but also within judicial jurisprudence. The theme of this volume is conforming this statement.