Hans Kelsen

Who was Hans Kelsen?

Hans Kelsen was an Austrian jurist, legal philosopher and political philosopher. Due to the rise of national socialism in Germany and Austria, Kelsen left his university post because of his Jewish ancestry, and departed to Geneva in 1933, and then to the United States in 1940. In 1934, Roscoe Pound lauded Kelsen as “undoubtedly the leading jurist of the time.” While in Vienna, Kelsen was a young colleague of Sigmund Freud and wrote on the subject of social psychology and sociology.

By the 1940s, Kelsen’s reputation was already well established in the United States for his defense of democracy and for his magnum opus The Pure Theory of Law. Kelsen’s academic stature exceeded legal theory alone and extended to political philosophy and social theory as well. His influence encompassed the fields of philosophy, legal science, sociology, the theory of democracy, and international relations.

Late in his career while at the University of California at Berkeley, Kelsen rewrote The Pure Theory of Law into a second version of his magnum opus to a widespread international reception.