Abstract

Many writers interested in Kelsen's concept of validity state that it is primarily related to such issues as the identity of a legal system, the membership of particular norms in a legal system, its internal consistency, and so on. The result is that for many, Kelsen's concept of validity bears no affinity to the idea of validity prevailing in traditional legal philosophy. This chapter argues that this reading of Kelsen's concept of validity is mistaken. Proponents of this reading have been led to disregard important aspects of Kelsen's theory, formulating unwarranted and tortuous interpretations of it in order to show how it deals with issues that are erroneously supposed to be primarily connected to its concept of validity. It is shown that Kelsen's theory, like traditional philosophical accounts of law, equates the validity of law with its binding force and its existence, and that it conceives of the ascription of validity as a normative judgement.