Hans Kelsen

Life and ideas

Hans Kelsen was born in Prague, grew up in Vienna and became one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century. In 1920 he drafted the Austrian Constitution, including a constitutional court, which became the model for such courts in Europe. His Pure Theory of Law aims to describe law as it is, free of politics, sociology and natural law. A legal system is a hierarchy of norms in which each norm is valid because a higher norm authorises it, up to the constitution and, at the top, a presupposed basic norm that says the first constitution should be obeyed. Dismissed from his post in Cologne by the Nazis in 1933, he taught in Geneva and Prague and, from 1940, in the United States, at Harvard and Berkeley, and wrote also on democracy and international law.