ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the boundary between law and politics is an 'apparent' boundary, meaning that there is a conception of a limit separating law and politics in legislation, adjudication and legal scholarship. This chapter focuses on the relation of law to politics. It describes established definitions of law and politics, and recapitulates common Swedish debates on the relationship between legal scholars and political scientists. In the Nordic context legal scholarship usually raises questions other than those concerning the relationship between law and politics. The idea of law as an object finds expression in the drawing up of a boundary between law and politics, which is important both theoretically and methodologically. In a widely used Swedish judicial textbook, law is defined as the doctrine of the rule of law combined with the practice of adjudication. Current law is considered to be the core of the academic discipline of legal scholarship and is also a common object of study.
