International and National Law
Identification of law as characteristically coercive is more difficult with public international law, but Kelsen finds sufficient sanctions.
As to the relation between public international law and national law, however, his position changed dramatically. In the first edition of Reine Rechtslehre, 1934, like many liberal contemporaries he was an internationalist monist: he looked to public international law as global law, subsuming all national or state legal orders. This had the happy consequence that, in its contemporary application, the universality of the Pure Theory (and Kelsen insisted that only universal truths could be 'scientific') would coincide with that of predominantly global law.
By the end of World War II, however, he gave up on this aspiration as unrealistic and, with evident reluctance, accepted a sort of optional monism. He found equally tenable the view that the public international legal order is supremely valid and the view that each national or state legal order is - for itself, in a kind of 'solipsism' - supremely valid. The story of the 'basic norm' might be read as a battle to come to terms with the 'solipsist' option. Kelsen needed not to adopt such solipsism but to provide an account of it.
Read more about this topic: Pure Theory Of Law
Famous quotes containing the words international and, national and/or law:
“There is no magic decoding ring that will help us read our young adolescent’s feelings. Rather, what we need to do is hold out our antennae in the hope that we’ll pick up the right signals.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, III, ch.4 (1985)
“What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility ... a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.”
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)
“What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)