Abstract

Kelsen's theory of legal norms can be assessed adequately only if his writings are assigned to different phases. Contrary to Stanley L. Paulson's view, there is a radical break in the genesis of the theory around 1940, when Kelsen abandons the specific neo-Kantian thesis that the general legal norm is identical with the hypothetical judgment of legal science in favour of a rather naïve conception, according to which the judgment of legal science simply reproduces the pre-existing legal norm on a descriptive level. By reading this simple correspondence theory of truth of the later period into Kelsen's writings of the twenties, Paulson misses the central thesis of Kelsen's neo-Kantianism.