Pure Theory of Law

1967
 |  Law
Pure Theory of Law

Author: Hans Kelsen

Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

ISBN: 9781584772064

Category: Law

Page: 356

View: 650

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Kelsen, Hans. Pure Theory of Law. Translation from the Second German Edition by Max Knight. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. x, 356pp. Reprinted 2002 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-206-9. Cloth. New. $95. * The second revised and enlarged edition, being a completely revised version of the first edition which was published in 1934. Kelsen [1881-1973], was the author of more than forty works on law and legal philosophy, and is best known for this title and General Theory of Law and State. He was also the author of the Austrian Democratic Constitution, which was published in 1920, abolished during the Nazi regime, restored in 1945, and in force today. Walker calls Kelsen "possibly the most influential jurisprudent of the twentieth century." Walker, Oxford Companion to Law 699.

Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory

1996
 |  Law
Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory

Author: Hans Kelsen

Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand

ISBN: 0198265654

Category: Law

Page: 171

View: 974

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Hans Kelsen is considered to be one of the foremost legal theorists and philosophers of the twentieth century. His writing made an important contribution to many areas, especially those of legal theory and international law. Over a number of decades, he developed an important legal theorywhich found its first complete exposition in Reine Rechtslehre, or Pure Theory of Law, the first edition of which was published in Vienna in 1934. This is the first English translation of that work. It covers such topics as law and morality, the legal system and its hierarchical structure, theidentity of law and state, and international law.

Pure Theory of Law

2005-01-01
 |  Law
Pure Theory of Law

Author: Hans Kelsen

Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

ISBN: 9781584775782

Category: Law

Page: 356

View: 867

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Kelsen, Hans. Pure Theory of Law. Translation from the Second German Edition by Max Knight. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. x, 356 pp. Reprinted 2005 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-578-5. Paperbound. $36.95 * Second revised and enlarged edition, a complete revision of the first edition published in 1934. A landmark in the development of modern jurisprudence, the pure theory of law defines law as a system of coercive norms created by the state that rests on the validity of a generally accepted Grundnorm, or basic norm, such as the supremacy of the Constitution. Entirely self-supporting, it rejects any concept derived from metaphysics, politics, ethics, sociology, or the natural sciences. Beginning with the medieval reception of Roman law, traditional jurisprudence has maintained a dual system of "subjective" law (the rights of a person) and "objective" law (the system of norms). Throughout history this dualism has been a useful tool for putting the law in the service of politics, especially by rulers or dominant political parties. The pure theory of law destroys this dualism by replacing it with a unitary system of objective positive law that is insulated from political manipulation. Possibly the most influential jurisprudent of the twentieth century, Hans Kelsen [1881-1973] was legal adviser to Austria's last emperor and its first republican government, the founder and permanent advisor of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Austria, and the author of Austria's Constitution, which was enacted in 1920, abolished during the Anschluss, and restored in 1945. The author of more than forty books on law and legal philosophy, he is best known for this work and General Theory of Law and State. Also active as a teacher in Europe and the United States, he was Dean of the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna and taught at the universities of Cologne and Prague, the Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Harvard, Wellesley, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Naval War College.Also available in cloth.

Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law

2007
 |  Law
Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law

Author: Lars Vinx

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

ISBN: 9780199227952

Category: Law

Page: 230

View: 104

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By showing how Kelsen's theory of law works alongside his political philosophy, the book shows the Pure Theory to be part of a wider attempt to understand how political power can be legitimately exercised in pluralist societies.

The Idea of a Pure Theory of Law

2018-01-25
 |  Law
The Idea of a Pure Theory of Law

Author: Christoph Kletzer

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

ISBN: 9781509913442

Category: Law

Page: 208

View: 915

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Most contemporary legal philosophers tend to take force to be an accessory to the law. According to this prevalent view the law primarily consists of a series of demands made on us; force, conversely, comes into play only when these demands fail to be satisfied. This book claims that this model should be jettisoned in favour of a radically different one: according to the proposed view, force is not an accessory to the law but rather its attribute. The law is not simply a set of rules incidentally guaranteed by force, but it should be understood as essentially rules about force. The book explores in detail the nature of this claim and develops its corollaries. It then provides an overview of the contemporary jurisprudential debates relating to force and violence, and defends its claims against well-known counter-arguments by Hart, Raz and others. This book offers an innovative insight into the concept of Pure Theory. In contrast to what was claimed by Hans Kelsen, the most eminent contributor to this theory, the author argues that the core insight of the Pure Theory is not to be found in the concept of a basic norm, or in the supposed absence of a conceptual relation between law and morality, but rather in the fundamental and comprehensive reformulation of how to model the functioning of the law intended as an ordering of force and violence.

General Theory of Law and State

1949
 |  Law
General Theory of Law and State

Author: Hans Kelsen

Publisher: Transaction Pub

ISBN: 1412804949

Category: Law

Page: 516

View: 973

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Widely regarded as the most important legal theorist of the twentieth century, Hans Kelsen is best known for his formulation of the "pure theory of law"--within which the study of international law was his special field of work. The present volume, General Theory of Law and State, first published in 1945, allowed Kelsen to adjust his pure theory of law to American circumstances after World War II. It also afforded him the opportunity to present to English-speaking readers his latest ideas on the supremacy of international law. The volume is divided into two parts: the first devoted to law, the second to the state. Together these topics constitute the most systematic and comprehensive exposition of Kelsen's jurisprudence. The volume is not only a compendium of Kelsen's lifework up to that time; it is also an extension of his theories "to embrace the problems and institutions of English and American law as well as those of the Civil Law countries." Indeed, references to Continental European law are minimal compared with examples, scattered throughout the text, taken from the U.S. Constitution and several American court cases. This is more than a concession to American readers; it signifies that Kelsen's legal theory is truly general in that it accounts for the Common Law as well as the Civil Law. A systematic treatise on jurisprudence, General Theory of Law and State is a substantial reformulation of Kelsen's ideas articulated in several of his previous books, written in German. The juridical principles put forth by the most important legal theorist of the twentieth century remain of great value. This volume will be read by legal scholars, political scientists, and intellectual historians. Hans Kelsen had a distinguished career at a variety of European universities, and in government services, at Vienna, Cologne, the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes in Paris, and then in Prague. He served as legal adviser to the United Nations War Crimes Commission in Washington, D.C. A. Javier Trevio is associate professor of sociology at Wheaton College. He is the author of The Sociology of Law: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives and the editor of Transaction's Law and Society series.

Essays in Legal Philosophy

2015
 |  Law
Essays in Legal Philosophy

Author: Eugenio Bulygin

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

ISBN: 9780198729365

Category: Law

Page: 401

View: 353

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Eugenio Bulygin is a distinguished representative of legal science and legal philosophy. His essays, several written together with Carlos E. Alchourron, reflect the genre familiar from Alf Ross's On Law and Justice, Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law, and Georg Henrik von Wright's Norm and Action. Bulygin's wide-ranging interests include most of the topics found under the rubric of analytical jurisprudence - interpretation and judicial reasoning, validity and efficacy of law, legal positivism and the problem of normativity, completeness and consistency of the legal system, the nature of legal norms, and the role of deontic logic in the law.

Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law

2007-09-06
 |  Law
Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law

Author: Lars Vinx

Publisher: OUP Oxford

ISBN: 9780191566493

Category: Law

Page: 240

View: 276

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Hans Kelsen is commonly considered to be among the founding fathers of modern legal philosophy. Despite Kelsen's prominence as a legal theorist, his political theory has so far been mostly overlooked. This book argues that Kelsen's legal theory, the Pure Theory of Law, needs to be read in the context of Kelsen's political theory. It offers the first comprehensive interpretation of the Pure Theory that makes systematic use of Kelsen's conception of the rule of law, of his theory of democracy, his defense of constitutional review, and his views on international law. Once it is read in the context of Kelsen's political works, Kelsen's analysis of legal normativity provides us with a notion of political legitimacy that is distinct from any comprehensive and contestable theory of justice. It shows how members of pluralist societies can reasonably acknowledge the binding nature of law, even where its content does not fully accord with their own substantive views of the requirements of justice, provided it is created in accordance with an ideal of fair arbitration amongst social groups. This result leads to a fundamental re-evaluation of the Pure Theory of Law. The theory is best understood as an attempt to find a middle ground between natural law and legal positivism. Later positivist legal theorists inspired by Kelsen's work failed to appreciate the political-theoretical context of the Pure Theory and turned to a narrow instrumentalism about the functions of law. The perspective on Kelsen offered in this book aims to reconnect positivist legal thought with normative political theory.

The Idea of a Pure Theory of Law

2018-01-25
 |  Law
The Idea of a Pure Theory of Law

Author: Christoph Kletzer

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

ISBN: 9781509913459

Category: Law

Page: 208

View: 623

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Most contemporary legal philosophers tend to take force to be an accessory to the law. According to this prevalent view the law primarily consists of a series of demands made on us; force, conversely, comes into play only when these demands fail to be satisfied. This book claims that this model should be jettisoned in favour of a radically different one: according to the proposed view, force is not an accessory to the law but rather its attribute. The law is not simply a set of rules incidentally guaranteed by force, but it should be understood as essentially rules about force. The book explores in detail the nature of this claim and develops its corollaries. It then provides an overview of the contemporary jurisprudential debates relating to force and violence, and defends its claims against well-known counter-arguments by Hart, Raz and others. This book offers an innovative insight into the concept of Pure Theory. In contrast to what was claimed by Hans Kelsen, the most eminent contributor to this theory, the author argues that the core insight of the Pure Theory is not to be found in the concept of a basic norm, or in the supposed absence of a conceptual relation between law and morality, but rather in the fundamental and comprehensive reformulation of how to model the functioning of the law intended as an ordering of force and violence.

General Theory of Law and State

2009
 |  Law
General Theory of Law and State

Author: Hans Kelsen

Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

ISBN: 9781584777175

Category: Law

Page: 516

View: 976

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Reprint of the first edition. This classic work by the important Austrian jurist is the fullest exposition of his enormously influential pure theory of law, which includes a theory of the state. It also has an extensive appendix that discusses the pure theory in comparison with the law of nature, positivism, historical natural law, metaphysical dualism and scientific-critical philosophy. "The scope of the work is truly universal. It never loses itself in vague generalities or in unconnected fragments of thought. On the contrary, precision in the formulation of details and rigorous system are characteristic features of the exposition: only a mind fully concentrated upon that logical structure can possibly follow Kelsen's penetrating analysis. Such a mind will not shrink from the effort necessary for acquainting itself with...the pure theory of law in its more general aspects, and will then pass over to the theory of the state which ends up with a carefully worked out theory of international law." Julius Kraft, American Journal of International Law 40 (1946):496.

The Public International Law Theory of Hans Kelsen

2014-01-02
 |  Law
The Public International Law Theory of Hans Kelsen

Author: Jochen von Bernstorff

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 1107699878

Category: Law

Page: 344

View: 422

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This analysis of Hans Kelsen's international law theory takes into account the context of the German international legal discourse in the first half of the twentieth century, including the reactions of Carl Schmitt and other Weimar opponents of Kelsen. The relationship between his Pure Theory of Law and his international law writings is examined, enabling the reader to understand how Kelsen tried to square his own liberal cosmopolitan project with his methodological convictions as laid out in his Pure Theory of Law. Finally, Jochen von Bernstorff discusses the limits and continuing relevance of Kelsenian formalism for international law under the term of 'reflexive formalism', and offers a reflection on Kelsen's theory of international law against the background of current debates over constitutionalisation, institutionalisation and fragmentation of international law. The book also includes biographical sketches of Hans Kelsen and his main students Alfred Verdross and Joseph L. Kunz.

Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy

2009-07-01
 |  Law
Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy

Author: Richard A. Posner

Publisher: Harvard University Press

ISBN: 0674042298

Category: Law

Page: 428

View: 785

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A liberal state is a representative democracy constrained by the rule of law. Richard Posner argues for a conception of the liberal state based on pragmatic theories of government. He views the actions of elected officials as guided by interests rather than by reason and the decisions of judges by discretion rather than by rules. He emphasizes the institutional and material, rather than moral and deliberative, factors in democratic decision making. Posner argues that democracy is best viewed as a competition for power by means of regular elections. Citizens should not be expected to play a significant role in making complex public policy regarding, say, taxes or missile defense. The great advantage of democracy is not that it is the rule of the wise or the good but that it enables stability and orderly succession in government and limits the tendency of rulers to enrich or empower themselves to the disadvantage of the public. Posner’s theory steers between political theorists’ concept of deliberative democracy on the left and economists’ public-choice theory on the right. It makes a significant contribution to the theory of democracy—and to the theory of law as well, by showing that the principles that inform Schumpeterian democratic theory also inform the theory and practice of adjudication. The book argues for law and democracy as twin halves of a pragmatic theory of American government.