Hans Kelsen in America - Selective Affinities and the Mysteries of Academic Influence

This volume explores the reasons for Hans Kelsen’slack of influence in the United States and proposes ways in which Kelsen’sapproach to law, philosophy, and political, democratic, and internationalrelations theory could be relevant to current debates within the U.S. academyin those areas.

This volume explores the reasons for Hans Kelsen’slack of influence in the United States and proposes ways in which Kelsen’sapproach to law, philosophy, and political, democratic, and internationalrelations theory could be relevant to current debates within the U.S. academyin those areas. Along the way, the volume examines Kelsen’s relationship andoften hidden influences on other members of the mid-century Central Europeanémigré community whose work helped shape twentieth-century social science in theUnited States.  The book includes majorcontributions to the history of ideas and to the sociology of the professionsin the U.S. academy in the twentieth century. Each section of the volumeexplores a different aspect of the puzzle of the neglect of Kelsen’s work invarious disciplinary and national settings. Part I provides reconstructions of Kelsen’s legal theory and defendsthat theory against negative assessments in Anglo-American jurisprudence.  Part II focusesboth on Kelsen’s theoreticalviews on international law and his practical involvement in the post-wardevelopment of international criminal law.  Part III addresses Kelsen’s theories ofdemocracy and justice while placing him in dialogue with other majortwentieth-century thinkers, including two fellow émigré scholars, Leo Straussand Albert Ehrenzweig. Part IV explores Kelsen’s intellectual legacies throughEuropean and American perspectives on the interaction of Kelsen’s theoreticalapproach to law and national legal traditions in the United States and Germany.  Each contribution features a particularapplications of Kelsen’s approach to doctrinal and interpretive issuescurrently of interest in the legal academy. The volume concludes with two chapters on the nature of Kelsen’s legaltheory as an instance of modernism.