Karl Olivecrona, Swedish lawyer and philosopher (died 1980)

Karl Olivecrona was a Swedish lawyer and legal philosopher. He studied law at Uppsala from 1915 to 1920 and was a pupil of Axel Hägerström, the spiritual father of Scandinavian legal realism. One of the internationally best-known Swedish legal theorists, Olivecrona was a professor of procedural law and legal philosophy at Lund University. His writings emphasise the psychological significance of legal ideas. His most striking work on legal theory, the first edition of his book Law as Fact, stressed the importance of a monopoly of force as the fundamental basis of law. The book's second edition, published in 1971, was changed considerably due to Germany's defeat in World War II. Olivecrona's view on politics during the war was in fact a pure nazi ideology; he emphasized a need for overwhelming coercive power to guarantee order in international relations. He became convinced that Europe required an unchallengeable controlling force to ensure its peace and unity, and that Germany alone could provide this. His pamphlet England eller Tyskland, published in 1940, the darkest days of the war, argued that Britain had lost its claim to exert leadership in Europe and that the future required an acceptance of German hegemony.