Groundless Law: Hans Kelsen’s Critical Legal Theory (Law and Politics)

This book explores the critical edge of Hans Kelsen’s pure theory of law, often muted in doctrinal interpretations, and highlights how Kelsen sought to radically redefine both legal science and legal reality.The pure theory’s foundational concept of the Grundnorm (the basic norm) serves as the unifying thread of this book, demonstrating Kelsen’s conviction that any content whatsoever can be law, as he was wary of ideological justifications of any positive legal order.While Kelsen understood law as a result of material political struggles, he prioritized the normative over the factual and thus slipped into a mystification of his object of cognition.To flesh out the iconoclastic features of Kelsen’s thought and the limitations of his neo-Kantian rationality, this book engages with Kelsen’s affinity with Friedrich Nietzsche’s unruly philosophy.The deconstructive ethos of the pure theory is considered through a parallel reading of Kelsen and Jacques Derrida, demonstrating that the pure the