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Kelsen, Hans (1881–1973)

From Encyclopedia of Law and Society
Hans Kelsen is widely acknowledged as one of the master thinkers in modern positivist legal theory. Some scholars have classified him as a fundamental opponent of sociology in general and the sociology of law in particular. However, one can make a case to include Kelsen among sociolegal scholars. Born in Prague, Kelsen was the son of Jewish parents and thus had to overcome the usual animosities against Jews before he became a full professor of public law at Vienna University in 1919. On invitation from the socialist chancellor Karl Renner (1870–1950), he drafted the Austrian Constitution of 1920 and became a judge on the new Austrian Constitutional Court. In 1930, Kelsen accepted a professorship at the University of Cologne. Sacked by the Nazi government in 1933, he took a job at the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Études in Geneva, where in 1934 he finished his programmatic Reine Rechtslehre (Pure Theory of Law). A brief interlude at Prague University (1936–1938) was marred by…
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Chapter Overview H ANS KELSEN IS ONE of the iconic jurists of the twentieth century. His pure theory of law stirred up jurisprudence, as well as legal positivism, constitutional law and public international law. Yet Kelsen is also a major, though neglected, political philosopher, a champion of…
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Full text Article Kelsen, Hans

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
1881-1973 US jurist and legal theorist He was born in Prague, and became a professor at Vienna (1911-30), and at Cologne (1930-33), then returned to Prague (1933-38). His early work was on constitutional and international law. He worked on the Austrian constitution of 1920 and until 1929 was a judge…
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Chapter Overview T HE STANDARD VIEW of international Realism is that it is congenitally sceptical about attempts to reform, let alone fundamentally restructure, interstate ‘anarchy’. Though the orthodox view accurately describes the positions of important, institutionally conservative…
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Full text Article Kelsinian jurisprudence

From Collins Dictionary of Law
the school of jurisprudence based on the writings of Hans Kelsen. It is based upon a pure theory of law that attempts to explain law without the detail of any given system and without being polluted by politics or theories of justice. It is based upon an ordering of norms and relies upon the…
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Full text Article Critical Legal Studies

From The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies
Critical legal studies (CLS) as a general approach may be said to have emerged out of the same concerns and influences as the critical traditions in psychology and other social sciences and to have emerged on a roughly corresponding schedule. Thus, one can trace the impact of Marxism, critical…
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Full text Article basic norm

From Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
also called Grundnorm , in a legal system, the norm that determines the legal validity of all other norms. The content of such an ultimate norm may provide, e.g., that norms created by a legislature or by a court are legally valid. The validity of such an ultimate norm cannot be established as a…
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Full text Article Hayek, Friedrich August von

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Austrian economist and author of Road to Serfdom (1944), an indictment of government intervention in modern economies representing ‘creeping socialism’. He shared the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1974 with Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal , for his analysis of the interdependence of economic, social, …
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Full text Article RULE OF LAW

From Dictionary of Untranslatables
FRENCH État de droit GERMAN Rechtstaat ➤ CIVIL SOCIETY , DUTY , HERRSCHAFT , LAW , LIBERAL , MACHT , POLIS , POLITICS , …
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Full text Article legal positivism

From Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
a theory about the nature of law, commonly thought to be characterized by two major tenets: (1) that there is no necessary connection between law and morality; and (2) that legal validity is determined ultimately by reference to certain basic social facts, e.g. the command of the sovereign (John…
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Full text Article Raz, Joseph (b.1939),

From Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
Israeli legal, moral, and political philosopher best known for seminal work defending legal positivism, the view that there is no necessary conceptual connection between law and morality. In his early work, Authority of Law (1979), Raz defends “exclusive” legal positivism, the view that moral…
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