Thinking freely is great, but thinking correctly is greater

Henrik Forshamn asks this and other questions in his licentiate thesis "Thinking freely is great, but thinking correctly is greater. Prologue. A self-critical study of juristic method", which he will defend at a seminar at Juridicum's premises on Riddartorget in Uppsala on 18 April. The opponent is Associate Professor Max Marklund Lyles at the University of Gothenburg. (The seminar will be held i Swedish.)

“What happens when history is written by someone not trained as a historian? What happens to the history of music in the hands of the concert pianist, when the sculptor shapes the history of art and when the priest shapes the understanding of the church's past? These histories may be engaging, but we distinguish them from the scientific histories written in music, art, and church or religious history,” Henrik explains and continues:

“In law, we find that things are different, and how we got here is an important question, to which the doctoral text 'Thinking freely is great' returns. “This thesis”, Henrik explains, “focuses instead on the more fundamental question of what happens to the understanding of the past in the hands of the lawyer, as an untrained historian, and his legal method.”

Henrik addresses the tendency that inheres legal historiography within the framework of what he calls self-criticism. The dissertation thus constitutes a legal science contribution to historical source criticism.

“The thesis also addresses the above question of the split identity of the discipline. Juristic and historical legal history are based on different scientific views, methods, and source critics. They should therefore be considered and treated as different types of knowledge with different scientific bases," Henrik concludes.