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Austin, Kelsen, and the Model of Sovereignty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2015

Lars Vinx
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Extract

Hans Kelsen’s critique of John Austin has so far attracted little attention among legal theorists. This article argues that Kelsen’s attack on Austin anticipated the key elements of Hart’s rejection of the Austinian conception of law as sanction-backed sovereign command. At the same time, the way in which Kelsen presents his critique of Austin’s conception of sovereignty reveals important differences in purpose and intention between Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law and Hart’s legal theory. The Pure Theory of Law is animated by an ideal of legality that is alien to purely descriptive jurisprudential approaches in the Hartian tradition.

The article concludes that this difference between Kelsen and Hart merits further exploration and that it might help to show that the Pure Theory of Law is still relevant to contemporary legal theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , July 2011 , pp. 473 - 490
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 2011 

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References

I would like to thank student editor Harold Godsoe for excellent work.

1. Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law did not develop under the influence of Austin’s work, and Kelsen only began to write about Austin after his emigration to the US. The key texts for Kelsen’s criticism of Austin are: Kelsen, Hans, “The Pure Theory of Law and Analytical Jurisprudence” in Kelsen, Hans, What is Justice? Justice, Law, and Politics in the Mirror of Science. Collected Essays by Hans Kelsen (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957) 266 CrossRefGoogle Scholar [Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”]; Kelsen, Hans, General Theory of Law and State, translated by Wedberg, Anders (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945) at 30-37, 62-64, 71-74, 77–83 Google Scholar [Kelsen, General Theory].

2. See Hart, HLA, The Concept of Law, 2d ed by Bulloch, Penelope A & Raz, Joseph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) at 35–42 Google Scholar.

3. See Paulson, Stanley, “Introduction” in Kelsen, Hans, Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory: A translation of the First Edition of the Reine Rechtslehre or Pure Theory of Law, ed by and translated by Paulson, Bonnie Litschewski & Paulson, Stanley L (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) xvii at xliiGoogle Scholar.

4. Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 271.

5. See Kelsen, supra note 3 at 7-19.

6. Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 266.

7. Austin, John, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, ed by Rumble, Wilfrid E (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) at 38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. See ibid at 157-63.

9. See Hart, supra note 2 at 26-78.

10. See Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 272-74; Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 1 at 30-32.

11. See Austin, supra note 7 at 22.

12. Hart, supra note 2 at 80-83.

13. Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 1 at 31-32.

14. Ibid at 32.

15. See ibid at 32.

16. See ibid at 32-34.

17. See ibid at 34-37.

18. See Kelsen, supra note 3 at 26-32; Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 1 at 30-58.

19. See, for example, ibid at 21-23; Kelsen, Hans, Peace Through Law (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1944) at 3 Google Scholar; Kelsen, Hans, Principles of International Law (New York: Rinehart & Company, 1952) at 13-15, 17–18 Google Scholar [Kelsen, Principles of International Law].

20. Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 1 at 61.

21. Ibid at 60.

22. Austin, supra note 7 at 22.

23. Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 1 at 62.

24. Austin, supra note 7 at 21 defines command as follows: “If you express or intimate a wish that I shall do or forbear from some act, and if you will visit me with an evil in case I comply not with your wish, the expression or intimation of your wish is a command.”

25. See Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 275-76.

26. Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 1 at 36: “That is the authority of the law, above the individual persons who are commanded and who command. This idea that the binding force [of the law] emanates, not from any commanding human being, but from the impersonal anonymous ‘command’ as such, is expressed in the famous words non sub homine, sed sub lege.”

27. Ibid at 61 and 60.

28. See Hart, supra note 2 at 35-42.

29. See Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 274-76.

30. See Austin, supra note 7 at 212.

31. Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 281.

32. See ibid at 269-71. Kelsen offers an exhaustive discussion of the relation of the Pure Theory to the sociology of law and state in Kelsen, Hans, Der soziologische und der juristische Staatsbegriff. Kritische Untersuchung des Verhältnisses von Staat und Recht (Tübingen, FRG: J.C.B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1928).Google Scholar

33. See Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 267-78; Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 1 at 30.

34. See Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 1 at 110-11; Kelsen, supra note 3 at 59-62.

35. See the discussion of Max Weber’s legal theory in Kelsen, supra note 32 at 156-70. For a (qualified) defence of Kelsen’s rejection of sociological jurisprudence see Raz, Joseph, “The Purity of the Pure Theory” in Raz, Joseph, The Authority of Law. Essays on Law and Morality, 2d ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) 293.Google Scholar

36. Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 281.

37. See Austin, supra note 7 at 164-83, 211-23.

38. Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 281.

39. See ibid at 278-83.

40. For a more detailed development of these themes see Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 1 at 181-207; Kelsen, supra note 32 at 114-204.

41. See Austin, supra note 7 at 165-83.

42. See Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 280-81.

43. But see Hart, supra note 2 at 144-50.

44. Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 281: “One of the distinctive results of the Pure Theory of Law is its recognition that the coercive order which constitutes the political community we call ‘state,’ is a legal order. What is usually called ‘the legal order of the state,’ or ‘the legal order set up by the state’ is the state itself.” See also Kelsen, supra note 3 at 97-106.

45. See p 477 above.

46. Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed by Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) at 375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47. See ibid at 374-80.

48. Schmitt identified the view that all public authority must rest on legal authorization as the core tenet of liberal constitutionalism and emphatically rejected it. See Schmitt, Carl, Constitutional Theory, ed by and translated by Seitzer, Jeffrey (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008) at 62-66, 169–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49. It may be objected that the contrast I am trying to draw here is undermined by Kelsen’s view that the law formally authorizes even acts of state that constitute material violations of the law. See Paulson, Stanley L, “Material and Formal Authorization in Kelsen’s Pure Theory” (1980) 39 Cambridge LJ 172 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a reply see Vinx, Lars, Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law. Legality and Legitimacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) at 78–100 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50. See Joseph Raz, “The Identity of Legal Systems” in Raz, The Authority of Law, supra note 35, 78 at 97-102. Raz argues that Kelsen’s thesis of the identity of law and state makes it impossible to offer a satisfactory account of the identity of legal systems.

51. See Austin, supra note 7 at 123-25, 171.

52. See Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 283-87.

53. Kelsen, Principles of International Law, supra note 19 at 17: “International law is law in the same sense as national law, provided that it is, in principle, possible to interpret the employment of force directed by one state against another either as sanction or as delict.” See also Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 1 at 328-41.

54. See Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 1 at 376-88; Kelsen, supra note 3 at 111-25.

55. See Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 1 at 388.

56. Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 284.

57. See Kelsen, Hans, Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts. Beitrag zu einer Reinen Rechtslehre (Tübingen, FRG: JCB Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1920) at 314–20Google Scholar.

58. Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 284.

59. See ibid at 284-85.

60. See the following: Hart, HLA, “Kelsen’s Doctrine of the Unity of Law” in Hart, HLA, Essays in Jurisprudence and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) 309 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raz, Joseph, The Concept of Legal System. An Introduction to the Theory of Legal System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970) at 95–109 Google Scholar.

61. See Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 267-68.

62. See Kelsen, supra note 3 at 111-12.

63. See ibid at 59-63.

64. This point is made explicit in Kelsen, supra note 57 at 85-101.

65. Kelsen, “The Pure Theory”, supra note 1 at 287.

66. See Joseph Raz, “The Rule of Law and its Virtue” in Raz, The Authority of Law, supra note 35, 210; Hart, supra note 2 at 203-07.

67. See Lauterpacht, Hersh, “Kelsen’s Pure Science of Law” in Jennings, W Ivor, ed, Modern Theories of Law (London: Oxford University Press, 1933) 105 Google Scholar; Vinx, supra note 49.