Fictionalising Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law

Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie – Band 163 Franz Steiner Verlag Auszug aus: DIE REINE RECHTSLEHRE AUF DEM PRÜFSTAND HANS KELSEN'S PURE THEORY OF LAW: CONCEPTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS Tagung der Deutschen Sektion der Internationalen Vereinigung für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie vom 27.–29. September 2018 in Freiburg im Breisgau Herausgegeben von Matthias Jestaedt, Ralf Poscher und Jörg Kammerhofer Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2020 Inhaltsverzeichnis / Table of Contents Vorwort. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 I. Die Grundlagen der Reinen Rechtslehre / The Foundations of the Pure Theory of Law JOHN GARDNER † Normativity (in Kelsen and otherwise) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 ROBERT ALEXY Hans Kelsen’s Legal Theory in the System of Non-Positivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 ALEXANDER SOMEK The Demystification Impasse Legal Positivism Divided Against Itself 45 CHRISTOPH KLETZER Decentralisation and the Limits of Jurisprudence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 CARSTEN HEIDEMANN Das „Faktum der Rechtswissenschaft“ bei Hans Kelsen* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 MAXIMILIAN KIENER Fictionalising Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 II. Rechtstheorie / The Mechanics of Law MATHIEU CARPENTIER Kelsen on Derogation and Normative Conflicts An Essay in Critical Reconstruction 125 Promotional material For distribution and publication For further information please visit our homepage: www.steiner-verlag.de 6 Inhaltsverzeichnis / Table of Contents MATHEUS PELEGRINO DA SILVA Suspension als eine Art von Derogation oder als weitere Funktion der Rechtsnorm? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 THOMAS HOCHMANN Welche Rolle für die Rechtswissenschaft? Zu einer Debatte innerhalb der Wiener rechtstheoretischen Schule 161 RODRIGO GARCIA CADORE Alternativermächtigung vs. Fehlerkalkül Wie geht das Recht mit Fehlern um? 177 BENEDIKT PIRKER Kelsen meets Cognitive Science The Pure Theory of Law, Interpretation, and Modern Cognitive Pragmatics 203 III. Die Anwendung der Reinen Rechtslehre auf Rechtsordnungen / Applying the Pure Theory of Law to Legal Orders LENA FOLJANTY Hans Kelsen, das Privatrecht und die Demokratie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 FERNANDO MENEZES Hans Kelsen’s Ideas on Public and Private Law and their Applicability to a Critical Analysis of the Theory of Administrative Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 D. A. JEREMY TELMAN Problems of Translation and Interpretation A Kelsenian Commentary on Positivist Originalism 257 TOMASZ WIDŁAK Kelsen’s Monism and the Structure of Global Law On the Relevance of a Kelsenian Account for the Polycentric International Law 275 ANNE KÜHLER Constitutional Pluralism and the Problem of the Hierarchy of Norms beyond National Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Promotional material For distribution and publication For further information please visit our homepage: www.steiner-verlag.de 291 Inhaltsverzeichnis / Table of Contents IV. Ideengeschichtlicher Kontext / Kelsen in Context FREDERICK SCHAUER Fuller and Kelsen – Fuller on Kelsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 URSZULA KOSIELI Ń SKA-GRABOWSKA The Impact of Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory on Alf Ross’s Ideas A Case of Scientific Plagiarism? 319 MARIO G. LOSANO Bobbios „Bekehrung“ zur Reinen Rechtslehre Die Turiner Schule und die Rezeption Hans Kelsens in Italien 339 STANLEY L. PAULSON Did Walter Jellinek Invent Hans Kelsen’s Basic Norm? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 MARIJAN PAVČNIK Rechtliche Natur des Staates nach Leonid Pitamic The Legal Nature of the State according to Leonid Pitamic 361 ULRICH WAGRANDL Kelsen was no Relativist Reading Hans Kelsen in the Light of Isaiah Berlin’s Value Pluralism 373 FEDERICO LIJOI The Democratic Value of Law Hans Kelsen on the Theory and Praxis of Relativism 393 REUT YAEL PAZ / MAXIMILIAN WAGNER Salvaging Scientific Socialism? Hans Kelsen’s Attachments and Detachments to Austro-Marxism 413 Promotional material For distribution and publication For further information please visit our homepage: www.steiner-verlag.de 7 Fictionalising Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law MAXIMILIAN KIENER Abstract: This essay raises a new challenge for Hans Kelsen’s The Pure Theory of Law, i. e. what I call the Cognitivist Challenge This challenge concerns the question as to how to retain Kelsen’s view about relative legal norms, i. e. that one can objectively cognise these norms, while not rejecting his view about absolute moral norms, i. e. that one cannot objectively cognise those norms. After explaining the Cognitivist Challenge in detail, I will present Positive Legal Fictionalism as a solution to it. I will claim that Positive Legal Fictionalism is rooted in Kelsen’s own statements and provides the specific epistemic advantages that Kelsen’s project of cognising the law requires. Positive Legal Fictionalism thereby deepens the understanding of Kelsen’s project as a ‘theory’ and as ‘pure.’ Keywords: Hans Kelsen, Legal Positivism, Fictionalism, Cognition, Validity, Basic Norm Schlagworte: Hans Kelsen, Rechtspositivismus, Fiktionalismus, Erkenntnis, Geltung, Grundnorm Introduction Hans Kelsen (1881–1973) was one of the leading so-called ‘legal positivists’ in the 20th century. He was a legal positivist because he exclusively focused on “questions of what the law is and how the law is made [i. e. the law as it is posited], not [on] (…) questions of what the law ought to be.”1 Kelsen separated his position from natural law theory by denying that law, in order to be law, “must have some concern for justice, be it a matter 1 Kelsen, Hans. Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory A Translation of the First Edition of the Reine Rechtslehre or Pure Theory of Law (Henceforth abbreviated as PTL1). Translated by B. L. Paulson and S. Paulson. 2004, Oxford Clarendon, 7. Emphasis added. In addition to referring to the English translation, I will also provide references to the German original. See Kelsen, Hans. Reine Rechtslehre Studienausgabe der 1 Auflage 1934 Edited by M. Jestaedt. (Henceforth abbreviated as RR1). 2008, Tübingen Mohr Siebeck, 15. Promotional material For distribution and publication For further information please visit our homepage: www.steiner-verlag.de 100 MAXIMILIAN KIENER of assuring an ethical minimum, be it a matter of attempting, however inadequately, to be ‘right’ law, that is, simply, to be just.”2 However, unlike many other positivists, Kelsen denies that the validity of legal norms (or in other words their normative bindingness) can ever be derived from the fact that people by and large comply with them. Kelsen adheres to a strict distinction of ‘is’ versus ‘ought’ and claims that a norm (i. e. an ‘ought’) can never receive its validity from a fact (i. e. an ‘is’) but only from another norm. Accordingly, a norm is valid if and only if it can be traced back to a higher norm which confers validity upon it. As the chain of validity-conferring norms cannot go back infinitely, Kelsen claims that the validity of legal norms ultimately depends on a first norm, the validity of which no longer depends on another norm. Kelsen calls such a norm the basic norm and presents it as a non-positive norm (i. e. a norm that is not posited and therefore not part of a given legal system) and as a norm that is merely presupposed in thought. The basic norm authorises the highest positive norm, e. g. the constitution, and can be schematically formulated as follows: “Coercive acts ought to be performed under the conditions and in the manner in which the historically first constitution, and the norms created according to it, prescribe. (In short: one ought to behave as the constitution prescribes.)”3 As the basic norm is necessary for the validity of norms, it will also be crucial for the cognition of the law as objectively valid, which Kelsen describes as his main objective: “my aim from the very beginning was to raise it [i. e. jurisprudence] to the level of a genuine science, a human science. The idea was to develop those tendencies of jurisprudence that focus solely on cognition of the law rather than on the shaping of it, and to bring the results of this cognition as close as possible to the highest values of all science: objectivity and exactitude.”4 In this essay, I aim to make two contributions to the debate on Kelsen. Firstly (1), I want to draw attention to a serious challenge to Kelsen’s project of the cognition of the law, pertinent to both editions of The Pure Theory of Law, which I call the Cognitivist Challenge and which has not received attention in the literature. Secondly (2), I want to show how trying to solve the Cognitivist Challenge leads to a deeper understanding of Kelsen’s project as a ‘theory’, i. e. a project concerned with cognition, and how it is ‘pure’, i. e. separated from morality as well as separated from sciences concerned with Kelsen, PTL1, 22. (RR1, 32.) Kelsen, Hans. Pure Theory of Law Translated from the Second (Revised and Enlarged) German Edition by Max Knight. (Henceforth abbreviated as PTL2). 2009, Clark The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 201. Also with regards to the second edition, I will provide references to the German original: Kelsen, Hans. Reine Rechtslehre Studienausgabe der 2 Auflage 1960 Edited by M. Jestaedt. (Henceforth abbreviated as RR2). 2017, Tübingen Mohr Siebeck, 359. See also Kelsen, RR1, 76. 4 Kelsen, PTL1, 1. (Footnote 1). 2 3 Promotional material For distribution and publication For further information please visit our homepage: www.steiner-verlag.de Fictionalising Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law matters of fact as opposed to norms. In particular, I will aim to solve the Cognitivist Challenge by presenting an account I call Positive Legal Fictionalism. From an exegetical perspective (2.1), I will claim that Positive Legal Fictionalism can be firmly rooted in Kelsen’s own statements, albeit it sometimes needs to develop Kelsen’s statements further rather than taking them for granted. Therefore, Positive Legal Fictionalism will be a Kelsenian but not quite Kelsen’s own account. From a systematic perspective (2.2), I will then explain the specific epistemic advantages that Positive Legal Fictionalism provides for Kelsen’s project of cognising the law, thereby solving the Cognitivist Dilemma, and emphasise the value of fictionalism for legal positivism. Finally (3), I summarise my results and draw conclusions. This essay is very ambitious. To address and solve the Cognitivist Challenge, I will need to take into account a very wide scope of Kelsen’s primary texts: Kelsen’s early writings, the two editions (from 1934 and 1960) of Kelsen’s The Pure Theory of Law, work from Kelsen’s late period, as well as Kelsen’s correspondence with other scholars. In addition, I will need to link the debate on Kelsen to claims from the philosophical and metaethical debate on so-called fictionalism, i. e. a link which has not been explored in the debate on Kelsen so far. And finally, I will also always need to balance exegetical and systematic aspects in the course of developing my arguments. The combination of such ambition and the usual space constraints will prevent me from discussing the wide body of secondary literature on Kelsen’s work in detail. On the one hand, I will thereby have to leave the reader with room for further inquiry, i. e. an inquiry into how my approach exactly aligns or conflicts with the majority view on some of Kelsen’s claims. On the other hand, it is precisely such an approach that will enable me to focus on very important exegetical and systematic aspects in sufficient depth, thereby providing a fresh take on many of Kelsen’s claims. Hence, I hope that the way in which I will proceed in this essay, including my scare treatment of secondary literature, is not only excused with reference to space constraints but also appreciated as intrinsically linked to the object to my inquiry and the ambition I pursue. 1. The Cognitivist Challenge Hans Kelsen presents The Pure Theory of Law explicitly as a “theory.” By “theory”, he means that The Pure Theory of Law “aims solely at cognition of its subject-matter”5 and is therefore a genuinely scientific project. Kelsen then identifies as the subject-matter the legal norm, which he claims can be stated in the form of a conditional: it (legally) ought to be the case that if some natural event X occurs then the legal consequence Y is imposed. Kelsen continuously emphasizes that one can reach objective cognition 5 Kelsen, PTL1, 7. (Footnote 1). Promotional material For distribution and publication For further information please visit our homepage: www.steiner-verlag.de 101 ... is that the end? You can purchase the complete work: ... either on our eLibrary at elibrary.steiner-verlag.de ... or in print on our homepage www.steiner-verlag.de Please share this PDF! Post it on Twitter or Facebook or email it – very easily done via the eLibrary. Tell your friends and colleagues about your latest publication – it’s quick and easy and in accordance with copyright conventions. There are no restrictions on sharing this PDF via social media.