¹ See Kletzer, Christoph, Kelsen, Sander, and the Gegenstandsproblem of Legal Science, 12 German L. J. 794 (2011).Google Scholar

² See id. Google Scholar

³ See id. at 803.Google Scholar

⁴ The suggestion will be nevertheless be made in passing that Kletzer's case for holding Kelsen hostage to the “cognitivity thesis” is unconvincing.Google Scholar

⁵ Kletzer, , supra note 1, at 794.Google Scholar

⁶ Id. Google Scholar

⁷ Id. Google Scholar

⁸ Id. at 793.Google Scholar

⁹ See Kletzer, , supra note 1, at 792, n. 14 (defining “legal science” as “doctrinal legal scholarship, or legal research (i.e. what we do in law schools and get money for from research bodies and the government). The Germans call it ‘Rechtswissenschaft.'”.Google Scholar

¹⁰ See id. at 792.Google Scholar

¹¹ See id. at 791.Google Scholar

¹² Id. Google Scholar

¹³ Id. at 801.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Id. at 791.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Id. Google Scholar

¹⁶ Id. Google Scholar

¹⁷ Id. at 794.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Cf. id. at 802.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Id. at 791.Google Scholar

²⁰ Id. Google Scholar

²¹ Id. at 792.Google Scholar

²² Kelsen, Hans, The Pure Theory of Law 72 (Max Knight trans., 2d ed.) (1970) [hereinafter Kelsen, Pure Theory].Google Scholar

²³ Kletzer, , supra note 1, at 793, quoting Fritz Sander, Rechtsdogmatik oder Theorie der Rechtserfahrung? Kritische Studie zur Rechtslehre Hans Kelsens 93 (1921).Google Scholar

²⁴ Kletzer, , supra note 1, at 794.Google Scholar

²⁵ Id. Google Scholar

²⁶ See Kelsen, Hans, General Theory of Law and State 133 (1945) [hereinafter Kelsen, General Theory]; or Kelsen, Pure Theory, supra note 22, at 234. These “borderline cases” are, on the one hand, the “acts which are only law application, not law creation,” i.e. “the acts … by which the coercive acts, authorized by the legal norms, are executed,” and, on the other hand, the “act of positive law creation, which is not the application of a positive legal norm: the enactment of the historically first constitution.” See Kelsen, supra note 22, at 236.Google Scholar

²⁷ Kelsen, , Pure Theory, supra note 22, at 234; see also Hans Kelsen, Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory: A Translation of the First Edition of the Reine Rechtslehre or Pure Theory of Law 70 (Bonnie Litschewski Paulson & Stanley L. Paulson trans., 1992) [hereinafter Kelsen, Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory]; Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 26, at 133–4.Google Scholar

²⁸ Kelsen, , Pure Theory, supra note 22, at 235.Google Scholar

²⁹ Id. at 237; see also Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 26, at 135.Google Scholar

³⁰ Kelsen, , Pure Theory, supra note 22, at 71, 221; see also Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 26, at 39, 124ff.Google Scholar

³¹ Kelsen, , Pure Theory, supra note 22, at 235.Google Scholar

³² Kletzer, , supra note 1, at 795.Google Scholar

³³ Id. at 796.Google Scholar

³⁴ Id. at 794 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

³⁵ Id. at 795 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

³⁶ Id. Google Scholar

³⁷ Id. at 799.Google Scholar

³⁸ Kelsen, , Pure Theory, supra note 22, at 72.Google Scholar

³⁹ Id. Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Id. Google Scholar

⁴¹ Cf. Kletzer, , supra note 1, at 794.Google Scholar

⁴² Kelsen, , Pure Theory, supra note 22, at 71.Google Scholar

⁴³ Kletzer, , supra note 1, at 799.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ “Legal science”, not “legal philosophy,” is the subject of the present discussion, and the claims of legal science are very different from those of legal philosophy. Not surprisingly, Kletzer's footnote to this sentence concerns only the latter; but what one needs here instead is an argument applicable to the former. (I am taking the term “legal science,” of course, in Kletzer's explicitly chosen sense: cf supra note 9).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Kletzer, , supra note 1, at 809.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Kelsen, , Pure Theory, supra note 22, at 70.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Id., at 70, 72; cf. also Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 26, at 39.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ See, e.g., Joseph Raz, Legal Reasons, Sources, and Gaps, in The Authority of Law 63 (2d ed. 2009).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Kelsen, , Pure Theory, supra note 22, at 70, 279 (distinguishing a “static” theory from “dynamic” one: a “static” theory “attempts to comprehend the law without consideration of its creation, only as a created order”); see also Kelsen, Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory, supra note 27, at 91; Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 26, at 39, 42, 122.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Joseph, Raz, The Concept of a Legal System 34 (2d ed. 1980).Google Scholar

⁵¹ Kletzer, , supra note 1, at 800, note 25.Google Scholar

⁵² Id. at 803.Google Scholar

⁵³ Id. at 795.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Id. at 801-2.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Id. Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Id. at 809.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ See Kelsen, , Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory, supra note 27, at 10; Kelsen, Pure Theory, supra note 22, at 3ff.; and also Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 26, at 41.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Kelsen, , Pure Theory, supra note 22, at 205.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Id. at 206.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Id. at 72.Google Scholar

⁶¹ On the intellectual genealogy of this notion, relating the autonomy of “normative sciences” to the respective “methodological forms,” and Windelband's and Rickert's influences on the formation of Kelsen's thought, see Stanley L. Paulson, J. W. Harris's Kelsen, in Properties of Law, esp. 14ff (2006).Google Scholar

⁶² See Kelsen, , Pure Theory, supra note 22, at 89–90; and Kelsen, General Theory, supra note 26, at 45–6, 163–4. The “form” of the legal judgment—the legal proposition, or Rechtssazt—is in Kelsen but a species of the general form of the normative judgment or proposition—the Sollsatz. It corresponds to a partial interpretation of the latter, where “b“ is interpreted as an “act of coercion” determined by a given legal order. See Kelsen, Pure Theory, supra note 22, e.g. at 58, 89; and Hans Kelsen, General Theory of Norms 272 (first endnote) (Michael Hartney trans., 1991).Google Scholar

⁶³ Kletzer, , supra note 1, at 800.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Id. at 801.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Id. Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Id. Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Id. at 802.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Id. at 791 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Id. at 805.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Id. at 811.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Id. at 813.Google Scholar

⁷² Id. at 811.Google Scholar

⁷³ Id. Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Id. Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Id. Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Id. at 810.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Id. at 811-812.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Id. at 813.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ See Ross, Alf, Validity and the Conflict between Legal Positivism and Natural Law, 4 Revista Jurídica de Buenos Aires 46ff (1961), reprinted in Normativity and Norms. Critical Perspectives on Kelsenian Themes 147ff (S.L. Paulson, B.L. Paulson eds., 1998); Nino, Carlos Santiago, Some Confusions around Kelsen's Concept of Validity, 64 Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 357ff (1978), reprinted (with minor changes, and under the title El Concepto de Validez Jurídica en la Teoría de Kelsen) in La Validez del Derecho 7ff (1985), and partially reprinted in Normativity and Norms. Critical Perspectives on Kelsenian Themes 253ff (S.L. Paulson, B.L. Paulson eds., 1998); Bulygin, Eugenio, An Antinomy in Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law, 3 Ratio Juris 29ff (1990), reprinted (under the title Validez y Positivismo) in Análisis Lógico y Derecho 499ff (1991), and reprinted in Normativity and Norms. Critical Perspectives on Kelsenian Themes 297ff (S.L. Paulson & B.L. Paulson, eds., 1998).Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Kletzer, , supra note 1, at 785.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Id. at 786.Google Scholar

⁸² Id. at 790.Google Scholar

⁸³ Id. at 785-786. The problem is in turn suggested to be well-known to Continental theorists; and the Pure Theory of Law is said to owe its “philosophic sophistication” precisely to its “early engagement” with the Gegenstandsproblem: see id. at 786, note 1.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Take, for instance, Kletzer's assertion (as well as the ensuing discussing in terms of divided “competences”), at 786, that “Hartian positivism,” “apart from being a theory of the positive law, is so obviously also a theory of the division of labour between itself and the positive law.” This oddly depicts “Hartian positivism” as if it were essentially, if only in part, a meta-theoretical stance. Or take, for another example, Kletzer's unqualified endorsement of Cotterell's account of Hart's “linguistic empiricism” at 788. In his discussion of ordinary-language philosophy, however, Cotterell confuses methods and subject-matter, saying, e.g., that according to Hart “legal statements” “represent“ (!) the (“observable”) “reality of linguistic practices of people living within a legal system.” Kletzer, supra note 1, at 789 (emphasis added).Google Scholar