Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law

Lars Vinx is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey and formerly a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Law at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

• 1. Introduction ; Three paradigms of legal positivism ; Kelsen's legal science ; Kelsen's legal politics and the identity of law and state ; Democracy, constitutionalism, and legal peace in Kelsen's utopia of legality ; 2. The Pure Theory of Law - Science or Political theory? ; Law and Nature - Subjective and Objective Legal Meaning ; Kelsen's theory of legal order ; Kelsen and theoretical anarchism: The pure theory as critique of ideology ; Conclusions on Law and Nature ; Law and Morality ; The pure theory as a theory of legal legitimacy ; Kelsen and the separation of law and morality ; Further questions ; 3. Kelsen's Principles of Legality ; Legal hierarchy and depersonalization of the state ; Kelsen's principle of legality I: Nullity ; Kelsen's principle of legality II: Voidability ; The sovereignty of law: The doctrine of normative alternatives reconsidered ; Further questions ; 4. Kelsen's Theory of Democracy - Reconciliation with Social Order ; Kelsen on the 'torment of heteronomy' ; The failure of the argument from deliverance ; Kelsen's defense of majority rule: The argument from reconciliation ; Freedom and Compromise: Democracy and constitutional entrenchment ; Kelsen's relativism ; 5. Democratic Constitutionalism - Kelsen's Theory of Constitutional Review ; Kelsen's conception of adjudication: Implications for a theory of review ; Kelsen on the concept of constitution ; Constitutional values and judicial role ; 6. Kelsen's Legal Cosmopolitanism ; Kelsen and the dogma of sovereignty ; Kelsen's doctrine of the unity of law - a defence ; On the viability of legal cosmopolitanism ; The moral relevance of Kelsen's legal cosmopolitanism ; VII. Conclusions - The Pure Theory of Law and Contemporary Positivism

Select Guide Rating