Validity and the Basic Norm

Abstract

As we move towards the last quarter of the 20th century, there can no longer be any doubt that the formative jurist of our time is Hans Kelsen. If the mark of the genius is that he creates a cosmos out of chaos, then Kelsen has evidently earned that title. His pure theory of law has displayed for us, with splendid accuracy and elegance, the anatomy of a legal system. He has demonstrated the essential unity of law, the distinctive marks that separate the concept of law from that of morality, and the relationship between the legal order and the concept of the state. He has corrected the monocular excesses both of Austin, who placed exaggerated emphasis on the role of a sovereign commander, and of the American realists, with their obsessive concentration on judicial activity. No general writer on the concept of law in the last half-century has been able to ignore Kelsen, and there is no important contribution to the general philosophy of law in that period that does not owe much to Kelsen's work.