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Radomir Lukić's Introduction to Law was a model textbook in Communist Yugoslavia for nearly fifty years. Still in use as a learning source in present-day Serbia, it combines Marxist theory of law with Kelsen's normativism in order to explain the legal rule as a social fact without denying its normative dimension. In order to discern the reasons for and patterns of this synthesis, the paper compares the first five consecutive editions of Lukić's textbook, as milestones of the author's intellectual evolution. The initial hypothesis is that Lukić's teaching was no more than a reinterpretation of his Parisian doctoral thesis from the late 1930s. Inspired by French theory of social law and despite being Marxist, his teaching was not of Marxist origin. As such, it facilitates understanding of the Communist theory of law, especially Marxist perception and reception of Kelsenian normativism.

The state and law exist, both realistically in time and space and ideally as a set of pure ideas and values in time, as contents of consciousness and mental processes. Legal sciences fall into the group of social sciences. The cradle of legal sciences is ancient Rome. The subject matter of legal sciences is the study of law and the state, as closely related issues. They are divided into general (abstract) and subject-specific (concrete) legal sciences. The subject-specific legal sciences are further divided into positive-law and legal-history disciplines. The theoretical or abstract legal sciences study the law and the state in general; they include disciplines such as: Introduction to law, Theory of law and state, Sociology of law, Economics of law, Psychology of law, Political science of law, etc. Introduction to law has an interesting relationship with Philosophy of law and Legal philosophy. Introduction to law is a general, basic, and introductory legal discipline that provides experientially verifiable knowledge. Philosophy of law and legal philosophy provide trans-experiential knowledge, using methods such as: intuition, inspiration, revelation. Concerning relations with subject-specific legal sciences, Introduction to law derives from specific legal sciences, but it exceeds the scope of their subject matter by studying the the most general concepts related to the law and the state.

Radomir Lukić's Introduction to Law was a model textbook in Communist Yugoslavia for nearly fifty years. Still in use as a learning source in present-day Serbia, it combines Marxist theory of law with Kelsen's normativism in order to explain the legal rule as a social fact without denying its normative dimension. In order to discern the reasons for and patterns of this synthesis, the paper compares the first five consecutive editions of Lukić's textbook, as milestones of the author's intellectual evolution. The initial hypothesis is that Lukić's teaching was no more than a reinterpretation of his Parisian doctoral thesis from the late 1930s. Inspired by French theory of social law and despite being Marxist, his teaching was not of Marxist origin. As such, it facilitates understanding of the Communist theory of law, especially Marxist perception and reception of Kelsenian normativism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]