1 From 1905 through the 1960s, Kelsen (1881–1973) published at an extraordinary rate-15 major monographs and several hundred articles. Two monographs have appeared posthumously: Kurt Ringhofer and Robert Walter, eds, Allgemeine Theorie der Normen (Vienna, 1979), appearing in English as General Theory of Norms, trans Michael Hartney (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Kurt Ringhofer and Robert Walter, eds, Die Illusion der Gerechtigkeit. Ein kritische Untersuchung der Sozialphilosophie Platons (Vienna, 1985).

2 Fritz Schreier, ‘Freirechtslehre und Wiener Schule’ (1929) 4 Die Justiz 321, at 322.

3 Michael Thaler, Mehrdeutigkeit und juristische Auslegung (Vienna, 1982) 18 (my emphasis).

4 Klaus Adomeit, Rechtstheorie für Studenten (Heidelberg, 1979) 77.

5 Günther Winkler, Wertbetrachtung im Recht und ihre Grenzen (Vienna, 1969) 49. See also the detailed statement in Günther Winkler, Rechtstheorie und Erkenntnislehre (Vienna, 1990) 198–227.

6 An important exception to the rule is Michel Troper, who engages in constructive criticism; see his ‘La Théorie de l'Interprétation et la Structure de l'Ordre Juridique’ (1981) 35 Revue Internationale de Philosophie 518.

7 The exception is Robert Walter, who does put the question directly. In his article ‘Das Auslegungsproblem im Lichte der Reinen Rechtslehre’, in Günter Kohlmann, ed, Festschrift für Ulrich Klug zum 70 Geburtstag, vol 1 (Cologne, 1983) 187–197, Walter asks whether Kelsen's work on interpretation, including the article appearing in the present number of Legal Studies, counts as a theory of interpretation. He answers that there is ‘no question, here, of a “theory of interpretation” or of an enquiry into “methods of interpretation”; rather, Kelsen's work is, understandably, a polemic against those movements in jurisprudence that proceed on the assumption that it is always possible to arrive at a correct result by means of interpretation’ (ibid, 189, emphasis in original).

8 See, eg, Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (London, 1985); John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust (London, 1980); Robert H Bork, The Tempting of America (New York and London, 1990).

9 On Dworkin and Bork, see ibid; on Raoul Berger's views, which I briefly discuss below, see his Government by Judiciary (London, 1977).

10 Brown v Board of Education (1954) 347 US 483.

11 Berger (note 9), 117–133, 230–245, 363–364, 407–408, 412–413.

12 Ibid, 408 (emphasis in original).

13 To be sure, Berger is not suggesting that the Supreme Court decisions he is criticising could somehow be undone; see ibid, 412–413.

14 Ely (note 8), at 1 (his asterisk note) suggests that ‘interpretivists’ (such as Berger) are legal positivists.

15 See, eg, Karl Llewellyn, ‘Remarks on the Theory of Appellate Decision and the Rules or Canons about How Statutes are to be Constructed’, (1950) 3 Vanderbilt L Rev 395; Rupert Cross, Statutory Interpretation (London, 1976) 99–141.

16 Cross (note 15) 101.

17 Hans Kelsen, ‘On the Theory of Interpretation’, (1990) 10 LS 130.

18 Ibid..

19 See Hans Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre, 1st edn (Leipzig and Vienna, 1934), appearing in English as Introduction to the Problem of Legal Theory, trans Bonnie Litschewski Paulson and Stanley L Paulson (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) §16. Perhaps the most useful commentary on the difficult and elusive notion of ‘specific meaning’ in Kelsen is Alf Ross, Towards a Realistic Jurisprudence (Copenhagen, 1946, reprinted: Aalen 1989) 39–48.

20 This is the received opinion in Continental circles; see, eg, A P d'Entreves, ‘Two Questions about Law’, in Natural Law, 2nd edn (London, 1970) 173–184, at 175–176. The most complete and accessible general statement of normativism is Joseph Raz, The Concept of a Legal System, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1980).

21 If ‘normativist’ were read as the proper adjectival form of ‘normativism’, that might help to mark a clear distinction between normativism on the one hand and a normative view on the other. (To be sure, the distinction between ‘normativist’ and the more common ‘normative’ is not generally observed.).

22 On norms in Kelsen's work qua abstract entities, units of meaning-content, see J W Harris, Law and Legal Science (Oxford, 1979) 13, 34–36, 107–131 et passim; see also the ‘hyletic’ conception of norms in Carlos F Alchourrón and Eugenio Bulygin, ‘The Expressive Conception of Norms’, in Risto Hilpinen, ed, New Studies in Deontic Logic (Dordrecht and Boston, 1981) 95–124.

23 See above all Joseph Raz, The Authority of Law (Oxford, 1979) 134–145; Raz, ‘The Purity of the Pure Theory’, in Richard Tur and William Twining, eds, Essays on Kelsen (Oxford, 1986) 79–97. In my ‘Introduction’ to Kelsen, Legal Theory (note 19), I offer a reconstruction of Kelsen's ‘middle way’ and the neo-Kantian argument that he adduces (on one reading) in support of it. In their essay ‘Normative Positivism: The Mirage of the Middle-Way’, (1989) 9 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 463, Deryck Beyleveld and Roger Brownsword argue that the ‘middle way’ of Kelsen and also of Hart is incoherent.

24 See, eg, Arthur Kaufmann, ‘Durch Naturrecht und Rechtspositivismus zur juristischen Hermeneutik’ in Kaufmann, Beiträge zur furistischen Hermeneutik (Cologne, 1984) 79–88, at 79, to appear in translation in Stanley L Paulson, ed, Jurisprudence in Germany and Austria: Selected Modern Themes (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

25 See the powerful statement in Peter Goodrich, Legal Discourse (New York, 1987) 40–41.

26 See note 74 and associated text.

27 Dieter Grimm, ‘Zum Verhältnis von Interpretationslehre, Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit und Demokratieprinzip bei Kelsen’, in Werner Krawietz, et al, eds, Ideologiekritik und Demokratietheorie bei Hans Kelsen (Berlin, 1982) 149–157, at 151.

28 Adolf Julius Merkl, ‘Das Recht im Spiegel seiner Auslegung’, (1917) 9 Deutsche Richterzeitung 162, 394, 443, at 171, reprinted under the title ‘Das Recht im Lichte seiner Anwendung’, in Hans Klecatsky, et al, eds, Wiener rechtstheoretische Schule, vol I (Vienna, 1968) 1167–1201, at 1179.

29 For the phases of development of the Pure Theory generally, see my brief sketch at note 33.

30 Kelsen, Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre, 1 st printing (Tübingen, 1911), 2nd printing, with new foreword (Tübingen, 1923).

31 Kelsen includes as the sixth chapter of Legal Theory (note 19) a slightly shorter version of the 1934 article.

32 Kelsen, The Law of the United Nations (London, 1950); Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre, 2nd edn (Vienna, 1960), appearing in English as Pure Theory of Law, transl Max Knight (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967).

33 The phases I shall be examining concern the development of the Pure Theory on the issue of interpretation, and they do not correspond directly to what I would set out as phases in a periodisation of the Pure Theory of Law generally. A brief sketch of the latter runs as follows. Constructivism, evident above all in Kelsen's great treatise of 1911, the Main Problem (note 30), is the first phase. It reflects not only Kelsen's intellectual ancestry in nineteenth century German public law, particularly in the work of Karl Friedrich von Gerber, Paul Laband, and Georg Jellinek, but also their ancestry in the early nineteenth century private law pandectistic (whose method Gerber transferred over to public law). Constructivism is displaced in Kelsen's theory over the course of the next 15 years by two crucial developments. He shifts to neo-Kantian precepts (in particular, the so-called basic norm) as a means of providing a justification for the claims he makes on behalf of the independent standing of his constructions (suitably altered, to be sure, to bring them into line with their justification). This development, first marked by writings around 1920, I would count as the second phase. Then, right on its heels, comes an altogether different development of almost equal importance: Kelsen's adoption from his colleague Adolf Julius Merkl of the notion of hierarchical structure (or Stufenbau) as the basis for conceptualising the legal system. This sets Kelsen to work on a ‘dynamic’ (or procedurally oriented) theory whose elements supplant many of the ‘static’ elements of the Main Problem. Already evident in the Allgemeine Staatslehre of 1925, this development, coupled with the programme of the second phase, marks a third phase. In the late 1930s, and increasingly thereafter, Kelsen begins to introduce concepts from the empiricist's repertoire, taking over in some of his writings Hume's notion of causality, for example, and adding that an a priori category of causation would be a step in the wrong direction, away from Hume. This flirtation with empiricist elements marks a fourth phase. Kelsen's fifth and last phase, sometimes termed his late period, marks the extraordinary change after 1960, when he throws over virtually the whole of the Pure Theory of Law as we know it from his earlier phases, introducing elements of a volitional or ‘will’ theory of law to take its place. In recent scholarship on Kelsen, little close attention has been given to his earlier phases; a welcome exception is Agostino Carrino, Kelsen e il problema della scienza giuridica (Naples and Rome, 1987).

34 See Kelsen, Main Problems (note 30) 123–130, 584–593 (on Windschied), 85–87, 172–188, 247–249, 398–406, 429–450, 480–491, 522–525, 551–554, 616–618, 629–655 (on Jellinek).

35 ‘The concept of state will has nothing to do with any psychological phenomenon of will. It is to be treated exclusively as the product of a legal construction - of a construction, namely, that is carried out for the purpose of imputation.’Ibid, 184 (my emphasis).

36 Georg Jellinek, System der subjektiven öffentlichen Rechte, 2nd edn (Tübingen, 1905, reprinted: Aalen, 1979) 12–41 et passim..

37 Ibid, 29 (my emphasis).

38 See ibid, 13–19.

39 Kelsen, Main Problems (note 30) 176, and see Kelsen's more extensive discussion of the same point, criticising Otto von Gierke, ibid, at 169–170.

40 Ibid, 170.

41 On the significance of the hierarchical structure generally, see phase three in my brief sketch of a periodisation of the Pure Theory of Law, at note 33.

42 Kelsen, Legal Theory (note 19) §31 (a).

43 See Kelsen, ‘Interpretation’ (1990) 10 LS 128–129.

44 Cp Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘Practical Philosophy as a Model of the Human Sciences’, (1979) 9 Research in Phenomenology 74, at 83; H-G Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd Engl edn, transl Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G Marshall (New York, 1989) at 307–311, 318, 324–341, 557.

45 Kelsen, ‘Interpretation’ (1990) 10 LS 128.

46 H L A Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford, 1961) 124–125.

47 For this point in Kelsen's third phase, see note 52 and associated text.

48 See Kelsen, ‘Interpretation’ (1990) 10 LS 129–130.

49 Ibid, 129.

50 Kelsen, United Nations (note 32) xvi.

51 Ibid..

52 Ibid, xvi––xvii.

53 The distinction is made clearly by Merkl, who speaks of ‘intellektuelle und authentische Interpretation’ in his article ‘Das Recht im Spiegel seiner Auslegung’ (note 28) at 175, and in Wiener rechtstheoretische Schule (note 28) at 1184.

54 Kelsen, United Nations (note 32) xv––xvi.

55 Oscar Schachter, Book Review: Kelsen, The Law of the United Nations, in (1951) 60 Yale LJ 189.

56 Kelsen, United Nations (note 32) 598.

57 International Status of South-West Africa, Advisory Opinion of 11 July 1950, (1950) ICJ Reports 128.

58 Schachter (note 55) 190.

59 Ibid, 191.

60 Kelsen, United Nations (note 32) 284.

61 For Kelsen's own discussion of the Security Council resolution, see ibid, 827–835, referring to the Official Records of the Security Council, 2nd year, no 3, p 61.

62 Schachter (note 55) 192.

63 Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre, 2nd edn (note 32), §16.

64 Kelsen, Die philosophischen Grundlagen der Naturrechtslehre und des Rechtspositivismus (Charlottenburg, 1928) 66, appearing in English as Natural Lam Doctrine and Legal Positivism, transl Wolfgang Herbert Kraus, in Kelsen, General Theory of Law and State (Cambridge, Mass 1945) 389–446 (appendix), at 437.

65 See my ‘Introduction’ to Kelsen, Legal Theory (note 19).

66 Kelsen, Legal Theory (note 19) §1; Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre, 2nd edn (note 32) §1.

67 To be sure, the shift is more than a ‘revised idiom’; from a neo-Kantian species of cognition characterised in terms of the kind of object - the legal norm - peculiar to it, Kelsen moves to propositional knowledge in the familiar sense. For an outspoken statement of the former, see the arguments against Georg Jellinek's ‘two-sides’ theory of law in Kelsen, Der soziologische und der juristische Staatsbegriff (Tübingen, 1922, reprinted: Aalen, 1962) 105–120. For the latter, see Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre, 2nd edn (note 32) §16.

68 The formulation gives expression to Kelsen's doctrine of peripheral imputation; see Kelsen, Legal Theory (note 19) §11(b).

69 Wilhelm Windelband, ‘History and Natural Science’, transl Guy Oakes (1980) 19 History and Theory 169.

70 Heinrich Rickert, The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science, transl Guy Oakes (Cambridge, 1986).

71 Here ‘systemically’ flags an ideographic notion in pointing to the fact that legal validity is relative to a legal system, is systemrelativ..

72 The thrust of these remarks follows a thesis first introduced, I believe, by Hans Klinghoffer: cognition of higher-level or general legal norms is mediated by interpretation, which, for Kelsen, is to say that one cognises a norm under an interpretation. See Hans Klinghoffer, ‘über mehrfache Auslegungsmöglichkeiten’ (1939) I (new series) Revue Internationale de la Théorie du Droit 187; much later Klinghoffer published a significantly longer version of the article (under the same title) in Scritti in onore di Gaspare Ambrosini, vol 2 (Milan, 1970) 1141–1171.

73 Ota Weinberger contrasts the ‘classical Pure Theory of Law’ with what he terms the ‘irrationalist’ view after 1960 in his monograph Normentheorie als Grundlage der Jurisprudenz und Ethik (Berlin, 1981) 95, 162, 168–177.

74 Kelsen, United Nations (note 32) xv, xiv. See also Christoph Schwaighofer, ‘Kelsen zum Problem der Rechtsauslegung’, in Stanley L Paulson and Robert Walter, eds. Untersuchungen zur Reinen Rechtslehre (Vienna, 1986) 232–251, at 239–240.

75 The phrase ‘methodological syncretism’ was used by Kelsen, Georg Jellinek, and others to refer to an illegitimate combining or fusion of different methods. As Jellinek puts it: ‘If one has comprehended the general difference between the jurist's conceptual sphere and the objective sphere of natural processes and events, one will appreciate the inadmissibility of transferring the cognitive method of the latter over to the former. Among the vices of the scientific enterprise of our day is the vice of methodological syncretism.’ Jellinek, System (note 36) 17.

76 Kelsen, ‘On the Theory of Interpretation’, (1990) 10 LS 127.

77 Kelsen, ‘Was ist die Reine Rechtslehre?’ in Demokratie und Rechtsstaat. Festgabe zum 60 Geburtstug von Zaccuria Giacometti (Zurich, 1953) 143–162, at 151, reprinted in Wiener rechtstheoretische Schule (note 28), 611–629, at 618–619.

78 Kelsen, United Nations (note 32) xv.

79 Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre, 2nd edn (note 32) §46.

80 See also on this theme Letizia Gianformaggio, ‘Hans Kelsen on the Deduction of Validity’ (1990) 21 Rechtstheorie (forthcoming).

81 See Kelsen, ‘The Emergence of the Causal Law and the Principle of Retribution’ (first published 1939), transl Peter Heath, in Kelsen, Essays in Legal and Moral Philosophy (Dordrecht and Boston, 1973) 165–215, at 199–200; see also Kelsen, Society and Nature (London, 1946) 249–262.