Norms of Competence in Scandinavian Jurisprudence

Abstract

It may perhaps be convenient to explain the use of the word competence in the above title. In Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld’s scheme of fundamental legal conceptions the term competence does not appear(1). There we find instead the word power. It is very likely that in this connection the word competence sounds somewhat strange to English ears. In his work The Concept of Law the Englishman H.L.A.Hart uses the term power in the same sense as Hohfeld did(2). There he disputes John Austin’s legal theory as consisting only of the commands of the Sovereign connected with a threat of something disagreeable in case of disobedience(3). Unlike Austin, Hart objects that law does not contain only rules of action but also, as an essential element, rules of a kind which he calls power-conferring rules.