The Vienna Circle and the Uppsala School as philosophical inspirations for the Scandinavian Legal Realism

The Uppsala School in philosophy and the Vienna Circle are prima facie similar currents in contemporary philosophy. Both reject metaphysics, claim that reality is a spatio‑temporal realm and adhere to noncognitivism in terms of values. However, justifications of these assumptions are quite different. In the following article we reconstruct main theses of both mentioned currents and then we indicate their impact on one of the major jurisprudential movements, namely Scandinavian Legal Realism. We focus on Alf Ross’ legal philosophy, as it was an attempt to accommodate both: the philosophy of the Uppsala School and of the Vienna Circle (while other Scandinavian realists referred exclusively to Uppsala philosophy). We trace those two sources of inspiration in Ross’ theory of legal validity and of legal concepts.