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Hans Kelsen (; ; October 11, 1881 – April 19, 1973) was an Austrian and later American jurist, legal philosopher and political philosopher. He is known principally for his theory of law, which he named the "pure theory of law ( Reine Rechtslehre)", and for his writings on international law and theory of democracy. The "pure theory" provides general foundations for value-independent description of law. As an expert on constitutional law, Kelsen was the principal architect of the 1920 Austrian Constitution, which with amendments is still in operation. The rise of totalitarianism forced him out of Austria, then to Germany and to Switzerland and in 1940 to the United States. Although in 1934 Roscoe Pound lauded Kelsen as "unquestionably the leading jurist of the time", the pure theory was rarely understood in the United States and Kelsen was never given a permanent position in a law school. He was employed in the department of politics at the University of California, Berkeley from 1942 until official retirement in 1952. He then rewrote his short book of 1934, titled Reine Rechtslehre, into a much enlarged "second edition" published in 1960; it appeared in an English translation in 1967.
The closing chapter of Kelsen's study of political allegory in Dante also was important for emphasizing the particular historical path which led directly to the development of modern law in the twentieth century. After emphasizing Dante's importance to this development of legal theory, Kelsen then indicated the historical importance of Niccolò Machiavelli and Jean Bodin to these historical transitions in legal theory leading to modern twentieth century law.Kelsen, Dante, concluding chapter. In the case of Machiavelli, Kelsen saw an important counter-example of an exaggerated executive part of government operating without effective legal restraints on responsible conduct. For Kelsen, this was instrumental in the orientation of his own legal thinking in the direction of government strictly according to law, eventually with a heightened emphasis on the importance of a fully elaborated power of judicial review.
Kelsen's time at Heidelberg was of lasting importance to him in that he began to solidify his position of the identity of law and state from the initial steps he observed as being taken by Jellinek. Kelsen's historical reality was to be surrounded by the dualistic theories of law and state prevailing in his time. The major question for Jellinek and Kelsen, as stated by Baume is, "How can the independence of the state in a dualist perspective be reconciled with its status (as) representative of the legal order? For dualistic theorists there remains an alternative to monistic doctrines: the theory of the self-limitation of the state. Georg Jellinek is an eminent representative of this theory, which allows one to avoid reducing the state to a legal entity, and also to explain the positive relationship between law and state. The self-limitation of the sphere of the state presupposes that the state, as a sovereign power, by the limits that it imposes on itself, becomes a rule-of-law state." For Kelsen, this was appropriate for as far as it went yet it still remained a dualistic doctrine and therefore Kelsen rejected it stating: "The problem of the so-called auto-obligation of the State is one of those pseudo-problems that result from the erroneous dualism of State and law. This dualism is, in turn, due to a fallacy of which we meet numerous examples in the history of all fields of human thought. Our desire for the intuitive representation of abstractions leads us to personify the unity of a system, and then to hypostasize the personification. What originally was only a way of representing the unity of a system of objects becomes a new object, existing in its own right."Kelsen, Hans. General Theory of Law and State, p. 198. Kelsen was joined in this critique by the distinguished French jurist Léon Duguit, who wrote in 1911: "Self-limitation theory (vis Jellinek) contains some real sleight of hand. Voluntary subordination is not subordination. The state is not really limited by the law if the state alone can introduce and write this law, and if it can at any time make any changes that it wants to make in it. This kind of foundation of public law is clearly extremely fragile."Duguit, Leon (1911). Traité de droit constitutionnel, vol. 1, La règle du droit: le problème de l'État, Paris: de Boccard, p. 645. As a result, Kelsen solidified his position endorsing the doctrine of the identity of law and state.Kelsen, p. 198.
In 1911, he achieved his habilitation in public law and legal philosophy, with a thesis that became his first major work on legal theory, Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre entwickelt aus der Lehre vom Rechtssatze ("Main Problems in Theory of Public Law, Developed from Theory of the Legal Statement").; reprinted, Aalen, Scientia, 1984, (an index was issued separately by the Hans Kelsen-Institut in 1988). Also published as Kelsen, Werke, vol. II. In 1919, he became full professor of public and administrative law at the University of Vienna, where he established and edited the Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht (Journal of Public Law). At the behest of Chancellor Karl Renner, Kelsen worked on drafting a new Austrian Constitution, enacted in 1920. The document still forms the basis of Austrian constitutional law. Kelsen was appointed to the Constitutional Court, for his lifetime. Kelsen's emphasis during these years upon a Continental form of legal positivism began to further flourish from the standpoint of his law-state monism, somewhat based upon the previous examples of Continental legal positivism found in such scholars of law-state dualism such as Paul Laband (1838–1918) and Carl Friedrich von Gerber (1823–1891).
During the early 1920s he published six major works in the areas of government, public law, and international law: in 1920, Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts (The Problem of Sovereignty and Theory of International Law)
. It is subtitled Beitrag zu einer reinen Rechtslehre (Essay toward a Pure Theory of Law). and Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie (On the Essence and Value of Democracy);. Second, revised and enlarged edition 1929; reprinted, Aalen, Scientia, 1981, . in 1922, Der soziologische und der juristische Staatsbegriff (The Sociological and Juristic Concepts of the State);
in 1923, Österreichisches Staatsrecht (Austrian Public Law);
and, in 1925, Allgemeine Staatslehre (General Theory of the State),.These works remain untranslated, except that key parts of Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts appear in Petra Gümplová, Sovereignty and Constitutional Democracy (Nomos Publishers, 2011). together with Das Problem des Parlamentarismus (The Problem of Parliamentarianism). In the late 1920s, these were followed by Die philosophischen Grundlagen der Naturrechtslehre und des Rechtspositivismus (The Philosophical Foundations of the Doctrine of Natural Law and Legal Positivism).; translated as "Natural Law Doctrine and Legal Positivism" in .
During the 1920s, Kelsen continued to promote his celebrated theory of the identity of law and state which made his efforts a counterpoint to the position of Carl Schmitt who advocated for the priority of the political concerns of the state. Kelsen was supported in his position by and Alfred Verdross, while opposition to his view was voiced by Erich Kaufman, Hermann Heller, and Rudolf Smend. An important part of Kelsen's main practical legacy is as the inventor of the modern European model of constitutional review. This was first introduced in both Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1920, and later in the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, as well as in many countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
As described above, the Kelsenian court model set up a separate constitutional court which was to have sole responsibility over constitutional disputes within the judicial system. Kelsen was the primary author of its statutes in the state constitution of Austria as he documents in his 1923 book cited above. This is different from the system usual in common-law countries, including the United States, in which courts of general jurisdiction from the trial level up to the court of last resort frequently have powers of constitutional review. Following increasing political controversy about some positions of the Constitutional Court of Austria, Kelsen faced increasing pressure from the administration which appointed him to specifically address issues and cases concerning the providence of divorce provisions in state family law. Kelsen was inclined to a liberal interpretation of the divorce provision while the administration which had originally appointed him was responding to public pressure for the predominantly Catholic country to take a more conservative position on the issue of the curtailment of divorce. In this increasingly conservative climate, Kelsen, who was considered sympathetic to the Social Democrats, although not a party member, was removed from the court in 1930.
Although Kelsen was successful in drafting sections for the Constitution in Austria for a strong court of judicial review,Le Divellec, 'Les premices de la justice...,' p. 130. his sympathizers in Germany were less successful. Both Heinrich Triepel in 1924 and Gerhard Anschütz in 1926 were unsuccessful in their explicit drive to instill a strong version of judicial review in Germany's Weimar Constitution.J.-C. Beguin, Le contrôle de la constitutionnalité des lois en République fédérale d'Allemagne, Paris: Economica, 1982, p. 20. The complete set of the articles published in the debate between Kelsen and Schmitt during the 1930s has been collected by Lars Vinx and published in English translation in 2015.
Kelsen accepted a professorship at the University of Cologne in 1930. When the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933, he was removed from his post. He relocated to Geneva, Switzerland where he taught international law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies from 1934 to 1940. During this time period, Hans Morgenthau departed from Germany to complete his habilitation dissertation in Geneva, which resulted in his book The Reality of Norms and in particular the Norms of International Law: Foundations of a Theory of Norms.Morgenthau, Hans, La réalité des normes en particulier des normes du droit international: fondements d'une théorie des normes (Paris: Alcan, 1934), still not translated into English. By remarkable good fortune for Morgenthau, Kelsen had just arrived in Geneva as a professor and he became an adviser for Morgenthau's dissertation. Kelsen was among the strongest critics of Carl Schmitt because Schmitt was advocating for the priority of the political concerns of the state over the adherence by the state to the rule of law. Kelsen and Morgenthau were united against this National Socialist school of political interpretation which down-played the rule of law, and they became lifelong colleagues even after both had emigrated from Europe to take their respective academic positions in the United States. During these years, Kelsen and Morgenthau had both become persona non grata in Germany during the full rise to power of National Socialism.
That Kelsen was the principal defender of Morgenthau's Habilitationschrift is recently documented in the translation of Morgenthau's book titled The Concept of the Political.Morgenthau, Hans (2011). The Concept of the Political, pp 16-17. In the introductory essay to the volume, Behr and Rosch indicate that the Geneva faculty under the examiners Walther Burckhardt and Paul Guggenheim were initially quite negative concerning Morgenthau's Habilitationschrift. When Morgenthau had found a Paris publisher for the volume, he asked Kelsen to re-evaluate it. In the words of Behr and Rosch, "Kelsen was the right choice to assess Morgenthau's thesis because not only was he a senior scholar in Staatslehre, but Morgenthau's thesis was also largely a critical examination of Kelsen's legal positivism. Thus, it was Kelsen to whom Morgenthau 'owed his Habilitation in Geneva,' as Kelsen's biographer Rudolf Aladár MétallMétall, p. 64.Frei (2001), pp. 48-49. confirms, and also eventually his subsequent academic career, because Kelsen produced the positive evaluation that convinced the board of examiners to award Morgenthau his Habilitation."Morgenthau, p. 17.
In 1934, at the age of 52, he published the first edition of Reine Rechtslehre ( Pure Theory of Law).Translated by B.L. Paulson and S.L. Paulson as Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory (Oxford, Clarendon P., 1992); the German subtitle is used as the English title, to distinguish this book from the second edition of Reine Rechtslehre, translated by Max Knight as Pure Theory of Law (Berkeley, U. California P., 1967). While in Geneva he became more deeply interested in international law. This interest in international law in Kelsen was in reaction largely to the Kellogg–Briand Pact in 1929 and his negative reaction to the vast idealism he saw represented in its pages, along with the lack of the recognition of sanctions for the illicit actions of belligerent states. Kelsen had come to endorse strongly the sanction-delict theory of law which he saw as substantially under-represented in the Kellogg–Briand Pact. In 1936–1938 he was briefly professor at the German University in Prague before returning to Geneva where he remained until 1940. His interest in international law became especially focused in Kelsen's writings on international war crimes which he redoubled his efforts on behalf of after his departure to the United States.
Another part of Kelsen's practical legacy, as he has recorded,. was the influence that his writings from the 1930s and early 1940s had upon the extensive and unprecedented prosecution of political leaders and military leaders at the end of WWII at Nuremberg and Tokyo, producing convictions in more than one thousand war crimes cases. For Kelsen, the trials were the culmination of approximately fifteen years of research he had devoted to this topic, which started still in his European years, and which he followed with his celebrated essay, "Will the Judgment In the Nuremberg Trial Constitute a Precedent In International Law?," published in The International Law Quarterly in 1947. It was preceded in 1943 by Kelsen's essay, 'Collective and Individual Responsibility in International Law with Particular Regard to Punishment of War Criminals', 31 California Law Review, p 530, and in 1944 by his essay, "The Rule Against Ex Post Facto and the Prosecution of the Axis War Criminals," which appeared in The Judge Advocate Journal, Issue 8.
In Kelsen's companion 1948 essay for J.Y.B.I.L. to his 1943 "War Criminals" essay cited in the above paragraph titled, "Collective and Individual Responsibility for Acts of State in International Law,"Kelsen, Hans (1948). J.Y.B.I.L., "Collective and Individual Responsibility for Acts of State in International Law." Kelsen presented his thoughts on the distinction between the doctrine of respondeat superior and the acts of State doctrine when used as a defense during the prosecution of war crimes. On page 228 of the essay Kelsen states that, "Acts of State are acts of individuals performed by them in their capacity as organs of the State, especially by that organ which is called the Government of the State. These acts are performed by individuals who belong to the Government as the head of State, or members of the cabinet, or are acts performed at its command or with the authorization of the Government." Yoram Dinstein of Hebrew University in Jerusalem has taken exception to Kelsen's formulation in his book The Defense of 'Obedience to Superior Orders' in International Law, reprinted in 2012 by Oxford University Press, dealing with Kelsen's specific attribution of acts of State.Dinstein, Yoram (2012). The Defense of 'Obedience to Superior Orders' in International Law, reprinted in 2012. Originally published in Hebrew in 1965 by Manges Press.
Shortly after the initiation of the drafting of the UN Charter on 25 April 1945 in San Francisco, Kelsen began the writing of his extended 700-page treatise on the United Nations as a newly appointed professor at the University of California at Berkeley ( The Law of the United Nations, New York 1950). In 1952, he also published his book-length study about international law entitled Principles of International Law in English, and reprinted in 1966. In 1955, Kelsen turned to a 100-page essay, "Foundations of Democracy," for the leading philosophy journal Ethics; written during the height of Cold War tensions, it expressed a passionate commitment to the Western model of democracy over soviet and national-socialist forms of government.
This 1955 essay by Kelsen on democracy was also important for summarizing his critical stance towards the 1954 book on politics by his former student in Europe Eric Voegelin. Following this, in Kelsen's book entitled A New Science of Politics (Ontos Verlag, reprinted in 2005, 140pp, originally published 1956), Kelsen enumerated a point by point criticism of the excessive idealism and ideology which he saw as prevailing in Voegelin's book on politics. This exchange and debate has been documented in the appendix to the book, written by the author on Voegelin, Barry Cooper, entitled Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science from 1999. Kelsen's 1956 book was followed in 1957 by a collection of essays on justice, law and politics, most of them previously published in English..
Some mystery surrounds the belated publication, in 2012, of Kelsen's Secular Religion. The text was begun in the 1950s, as an attack on work by his former pupil Eric Voegelin. In the early 1960s an expanded version was set up in proof but was withdrawn at Kelsen's insistence (and considerable personal expense in reimbursing the publisher), for reasons that have never become clear. However, the Hans Kelsen Institute eventually decided that it should be published. It is a vigorous defense of modern science against all, including Voegelin, who wished to overturn the accomplishments of the Enlightenment by demanding that science be guided by religion. Kelsen seeks to expose contradictions in their claim that modern science, after all, rests upon the same sorts of assumption as religionthat it constitutes forms of "new religion" and so should not complain when old religion is brought back in.
Kelsen's theory of law, his 'Pure Theory of Law' (Reine Rechtslehre), aims to describe law as a hierarchy of binding norms, while refusing, itself, to evaluate those norms. That is, is to be separated from . Central to the Pure Theory is the notion of a (Grundnorm)a hypothetical norm, presupposed by the theory, from which in a hierarchy of empowerments all norms in a legal system, from constitutional law downward, are understood to derive their validity, hence their authority or . This is not logical validity (i.e. of deduction), but ; a norm is legally if and only if the organ creating it has been so empowered by a higher norm. Public international law is understood as similarly hierarchical. In this way, Kelsen contends, the validity of legal norms (their specifically character) can be understood without tracing it ultimately to some suprahuman source such as God, personified Nature or a personified State or Nation. The Pure Theory is intended as rigorous legal positivism, excluding any idea of natural law.
Kelsen's main statement of his theory, his book Reine Rechtslehre, was published in two editions, far apart: in 1934, while he was in exile in Geneva, and a second, much expanded edition after he had formally retired from the University of California, Berkeley. The second edition appeared in English translation in 1967, as Pure Theory of Law.The title page gives the title correctly as Pure Theory of Law, but the original paperback cover had The Pure Theory of Law.The first edition appeared in English translation only in 1992, titled Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory in order to distinguish it from the translation of the second edition: The current translation of the second edition, in omitting many footnotes, obscures the extent to which the Pure Theory is both philosophically grounded and responsive to earlier theories of law; a new translation is in preparation.
Kelsen wrote primarily in German, as well as in French and in English. His complete works are being published, both in hard copy and online, as the Hans Kelsen Werke, planned to run to 32 volumes with completion in 2042.
Four major areas of Kelsen's contributions to legal theory over his lifetime included the following areas of (i) judicial review, (ii) hierarchical law, (iii) the de-ideologicalization of positive law to strongly disassociate all reference to natural law, and (iv) the clear delineation of the science of law and legal science in twentieth century modern law.
As summarized by Sandrine Baume, "In 1927 Kelsen recognized his debt to Kantianism on this methodological point that determined much of his pure theory of law: 'Purity of method, indispensable to legal science, did not seem to me to be guaranteed by any philosopher as sharply as by Kant with his contrast between Is and Ought. Thus for me, Kantian philosophy was from the very outset the light that guided me.'"Kelsen, Hans (1927). Selbstdarstellung in Jestaedt (ed.), Hans Kelsen im Selbstzeugnis, pp. 21-29, especially p. 23. Kelsen's high praise of Kant in the absence of any specific Neo-Kantianism is matched among more recent scholars by John Rawls of Harvard University.Rawls, John (2000). Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2000. This collection of lectures was edited by Barbara Herman. It has an introduction on modern moral philosophy from 1600–1800 and then lectures on Hume, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel. Both Kelsen and Rawls also have made strong endorsements of Kant's books on (1795) and Idea for a Universal History (1784). In his book titled What is Justice?, Kelsen indicated his position concerning social justice stating, "Suppose that it is possible to prove that the economic situation of a people can be improved so essentially by so-called planned economy that social security is guaranteed to everybody in an equal measure; but that such an organization is possible only if all individual freedom is abolished. The answer to the question whether planned economy is preferable to free economy depends on our decision between the values of individual freedom and social security. Hence, to the question of whether individual freedom is a higher value than social security or vice versa, only a subjective answer is possible,"Kelsen, Hans. What is Justice?, pp 5-6.
Five principal areas of concern for Kelsen in the area of political philosophy can be identified among his many interests for their centrality and the effect which they exerted over virtually his entire lifetime. These are; (i) Sovereignty, (ii) Law-state identity theory, (iii) State-society dualism, (iv) Centralization-decentralization, and (v) Dynamic theory of law.
Another form of the reception of the term originated from the fairly extended attempt to read Kelsen as a neo-Kantian following his early engagement with Hermann Cohen's work in 1911,Mónica García-Salmones Rovira, The Project of Positivism in International Law, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 258 n. 63. the year his Habilitation dissertation on public law was published. Cohen was a leading Neo-Kantianism of the time and Kelsen was, in his own way, receptive to many of the ideas which Cohen had expressed in his published book review of Kelsen's writing. Kelsen had insisted that he had never used this material in the actual writing of his own book, though Cohen's ideas were attractive to him in their own right. This has resulted in one of the longest-running debates within the general Kelsen community as to whether Kelsen became a neo-Kantian himself after the encounter with Cohen's work, or if he managed to keep his own non-neo-Kantian position intact which he claimed was the prevailing circumstance when he first wrote his book in 1911.
The neo-Kantians, when pressing the issue, would lead Kelsen into discussions concerning whether the existence of such a Grundnorm was strictly symbolic or whether it had a concrete foundation. This has led to the further division within this debate concerning the currency of the term Grundnorm as to whether it should be read, on the one hand, as part and parcel of Hans Vaihinger's "as-if" hypothetical construction. On the other hand, to those seeking a practical reading, the Grundnorm corresponded to something directly and concretely comparable to a sovereign nation's federal constitution, under which would be organized all of its regional and local laws, and no law would be recognized as being superior to it.Kelsen, Hans. Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts. Beitrag zu einer reinen Rechtslehre (The Problem of Sovereignty and Theory of International Law: Contribution to a Pure Theory of Law). Tübingen, Mohr, 1920.
In different contexts, Kelsen would indicate his preferences in different ways, with some neo-Kantians asserting that late in life Kelsen largely abided by the symbolic reading of the term when used in the neo-Kantian context, Die Rolle des Neukantianismus in der Reinen Rechtslehre: eine Debatte zwischen Sander und Kelsen by Hans Kelsen, Fritz Sander (1988). and as he has documented. The neo-Kantian reading of Kelsen can further be subdivided into three subgroups, with each representing their own preferred reading of the meaning of the Grundnorm, which were identifiable as (a) the Marburg neo-Kantians, (b) the Baden neo-Kantians, and (c) his own Kelsenian reading of the neo-Kantian school (during his "analytico-linguistic" phase circa 1911–1915)Stanley L. Paulson, "Four Phases in Hans Kelsen's Legal Theory? Reflections on a Periodization", Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 18(1) (Spring, 1998), pp. 153–166, esp. 154. with which his writings on this subject are often associated.
A third example of the controversies with which Kelsen was involved during his European years surrounded the severe disenchantment which many felt concerning the political and legal outcomes of WWI and the Treaty of Versailles. Kelsen believed that the blamelessness associated with Germany's political leaders and military leaders indicated a gross historical inadequacy of international law which could no longer be ignored. Kelsen devoted much of his writings from the 1930s and leading into the 1940s towards reversing this historical inadequacy which was deeply debated until ultimately Kelsen succeeded in contributing to the international precedent of establishing war crime trials for political leaders and military leaders at the end of WWII at Nuremberg trials and Tokyo.
Kelsen also became a significant contributor to the Cold War debate in publishing books on Bolshevism and communism, which he reasoned were less successful forms of government when compared to democracy. This, for Kelsen, was especially the case when dealing with the question of the compatibility of different forms of government in relation to the Pure Theory of Law (1934, first edition).
The completion of Kelsen's second edition of his magnum opus on Pure Theory of Law published in 1960 had at least as large an effect upon the international legal community as did the first edition published in 1934. Kelsen was a tireless defender of the application legal science in defending his position and was constantly confronting detractors who were unconvinced that the domain of legal science was sufficient to its own subject matter. This debate has continued well into the twenty-first century as well.
Two critics of Kelsen in the United States were the legal realist Karl LlewellynLlewellyn, Karl (1962). Jurisprudence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 356, n. 6. and the jurist Harold Laski.Laski, Harold (1938). A Grammar of Politics. London: Allen and Unwin, p. vi. Llewellyn, as a firm anti-positivist against Kelsen stated, "I see Kelsen's work as utterly sterile, save in by-products that derive from his taking his shrewd eyes, for a moment, off what he thinks of as 'pure law.'"Llewellyn, p. 356 In his democracy essay of 1955, Kelsen took up the defense of representative democracy made by Joseph Schumpeter in Schumpeter's book on democracy and capitalism.Schumpeter, Joseph (1942). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Although Schumpeter took a position unexpectedly favorable to socialism, Kelsen felt that a rehabilitation of the reading of Schumpeter's book more amicable to democracy could be defended and he quoted Schumpter's strong conviction that, to "realize the relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly," as consistent with his own defense of democracy.Kelsen, Hans (1955). Foundations of Democracy. Kelsen himself made mixed statements concerning the extensiveness of the greater or lesser strict association of democracy and capitalism.Kelsen, Hans (1937). "The function of the pure theory of law." In A. Reppy (ed.) Law: A Century of Progress 1835-1935, 3 vols., NY: New York University Press and London: OUP, 1937, p.94.
In 2006, the Hans-Kelsen-Forschungsstelle (Hans Kelsen Research Center) was founded under the direction of Matthias Jestaedt at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. After Jestaedt's appointment at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg in 2011, the center was transferred there. The Hans-Kelsen-Forschungsstelle publishes, in cooperation with the Hans Kelsen-Institut and through the publishing house Mohr Siebeck, a historical-critical edition of Kelsen's works which is planned to reach more than 30 volumes; as of March 2025, the first eight volumes have been published, of which the first five are free online.
An extensive biography of Kelsen by Thomas Olechowski, Hans Kelsen: Biographie eines Rechtswissenschaftlers ( Hans Kelsen: Biography of a Legal Scientist), was published in May 2020.It is reviewed in detail, with an English translation of its own summary, in
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