Notes on the concept of the state by N.M. Korkunov

Abstract

The essay is focused on studying the concept of the State that emerges in the late nineteenth century in the writings by N.M. Korkunov. After a brief biographical introduction, where the life and works of the jurist are recalled, his thought on the State is shortly explained in the context with that of the contemporary German jurisprudence.

N.M. Korkunov excluded both the existence of a legal personality of the State and that of a single State will, considering them rather as mere legal fictions, since they were not phenomena proper to social life. Realist approach brought him to the understanding that the only phenomenon of reality that could not in any way constitute a fiction or an expedient of a legal nature would have been, if anything, the state domination, as the only element of the state concretely perceivable by man.

The provided conclusions confirm the originality of his thinking from a methodological point of view. His methodological approach could perhaps allow him to be considered one of the fathers of the Sociology of Law.