VI People in Portrait, 63 Hans Kelsen (1881–1973)
Bardo Fassbender
From: The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law
Edited By: Bardo Fassbender, Anne Peters
- Subject(s):
- World War I to World War II — Since World War II — UN Charter
Hans Kelsen (1881–1973) is one of the most significant legal scholars of the 20th century. His work has been studied wherever legal theory is studied. It has been particularly influential in Europe and Latin America. Kelsen will be first and foremost remembered as a theorist and philosopher who renewed legal positivism and found new answers to the fundamental question of how law is to be constructed and understood. He gained a worldwide reputation for his ‘pure theory of law’ (Reine Rechtslehre)—a view of law ‘purified of all political ideology and all elements of...
