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

Abstract

Legal monism is the view that there is only one legal system. Hans Kelsen defended a particularly strong version of that view. Kelsen did not simply hold that there is only one legal system, as a matter of fact. He argued, rather, that it is impossible for a legal science to recognize the existence of more than one legal system. Legalscientifi c cognition, as a form of normative cognition , must assume, according to Kelsen, that no two valid legal norms confl ict, ie, that there are no two legal norms that make incompatible demands on the behavior of one and the same agent. And the absence or at least the resolvability of such confl ict between legal norms can be assured, Kelsen argued, only if all legal norms that exist are understood as belonging to one and the same legal system. Legal pluralism , in other words, is deemed to be juristically inconceivable (