1216-2574 / USD 20.00 © 2010 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest ACTA JURIDICA HUNGARICA 51, No 2, pp. 97–108 (2010) DOI: 10.1556/AJur.51.2010.2.2 CSABA VARGA * Law, Understanding of Law, Application of Law Abstract. After the classical heritage of both Civil Law and Common Law is characterised, their juristische Weltanschauung as professional deontology is reconstructed in parallel with their respective assumptions in theory formation. As to the nature of legal process, the moment of concealment is identified in both types with the final conclusion reached that humans’ individual activity and personal responsibility is hidden in the machinery. Civil Law is defined by rules enacted as the sole embodiment of the law, treated conceptually in a linguistico-logical way so as to be suitable to lead to mechanical application within the range of a meta-level dogmatic system. The interplay between logical subsumption and volitional classificatory subordination is analysed in order to show what legal ascriptivity is and why it ends with the artificial construction of legal force. Accordingly, Civil Law ideology is imbued with analogies as if cognition were at stake, in contrast to Common Law openly undertaking fiction to explain in what manner the judicial deliberation on facts whilst reconstruing the whys and hows of past instances can result in ascertaining what the law has allegedly ever been. The law’s understanding–theorised in the former and pragmatised in the latter case–is part of its applying as an ontic component of the very existence of the complex social phenomenon called law. Keywords: concept of law, law-applying, juristische Weltanschauung as professional deontology, disanthropo- morphisation, legal ideologies theorised/pragmatised, Civil Law, Common Law, comparative judicial mind I. Classical Heritage 1. The rich legal heritage of the Romans, with its changing internal emphases, assured a basis for the development of two differing traditions during the European Middle Ages and Modern Times. In the course of this formative process, starting in the 16 th and 17 th centuries the approaches to law characteristic of our Continent and of the Anglo-Saxon archipelago were gradually separated as they were strengthened by the failure of attempts to codify the law in England. 1 1. Continental Law 2. As soon as this separation has been perfected, in continental law nothing remains from the ius except that which has been posited as a lex. In terms of this transformation process, the regola–once serving as a didactic exercise and summation–becomes the sole bearer of any legal quality as a set of linguistic signs that is destined to embody the law. From that time on, anyone who is eager to know what the law is (in terms of its sense, message or significance) must turn to its embodiment in and by rules. 3. By this act and starting from the Roman imperial epoch, such a form becomes the exclusive source of any contents hidden in and by it. Of course, this form may easily prove to be casual, random and/or fallible; nevertheless, nothing else can be taken as law other than precisely that which has been edicted. This form is no longer an external gown veiling * Scientific Adviser, Institute for Legal Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, H-1014 Budapest, Országház u. 30.; Professor, Director of the Institute for Legal Philosophy of the Catholic University of Hungary, H-1088, Budapest, Szentkirályi u. 28–30. E-mail: varga@jog.mta.hu 1 Cf., by Varga, Cs.: Codification as a Socio-historical Phenomenon. Budapest, 1991.