Karl Olivecrona

He studied law at Uppsala from 1915 to 1920 and was a pupil of Axel Hägerström, the spiritual father of Scandinavian legal realism.

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.

One of Olivecrona's doctoral students, Per Stjernquist, who as a left-leaning liberal entirely rejected his supervisor's politics, became a pioneer of sociology of law and was largely responsible for establishing it as a university subject in Sweden in the early 1960s.