Universal Law
1. In law and ethics, universal law or universal principle refers as concepts of legal legitimacy actions, whereby those principles and rules for governing human beings' conduct which are most universal in their acceptability, their applicability, translation, and philosophical basis, are therefore considered to be most legitimate.
(1) When used in the context of ethics, the meaning of universal (from Gk. katholikos) refers to that which is true for "all similarly situated individuals." Rights, for example in natural rights, or in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, for those heavily influenced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment and its conception of a human nature, could be considered as universal. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights is inspired by such principles.
(2) In logic, or the consideration of valid arguments, a proposition is said to have universality if it can be conceived as being true in all possible contexts without creating a contradiction. Some philosophers have referred to such propositions as universalizable. Truth is considered to be universal if it is valid in all times and places. In this case, it is seen as eternal or as absolute. The relativist conception denies the existence of some or all universal truths, particularly ethical ones (through moral relativism). Mathematics is a field in which those truths discovered, in relation to the field of mathematics, are typically considered of universal scope. Though usage of the word truth has various domains of application, relativism does not necessarily apply to all of them. This is not to say that universality is limited to mathematics, for there exists a large number of people who apply the standard to philosophy, theology and beyond.
2. In metaphysics, a universal is a type, a property, or a relation. The noun universal contrasts with individual, while the adjective universal contrasts with particular or sometimes with concrete.
(1) Hegelism
The concept of being concrete, however, may be confusing since Hegelian and neo-Hegelian (e.g. British idealist) philosophies speak of concrete universals.
(2) Platonism
Platonic realism holds universals to be the referents of general terms, i.e. the abstract, nonphysical entities to which words like "dogs" or "redness". By contrast, particulars are the referents of proper names, like "Fido", or of definite descriptions that identify single objects, like the phrase, "that apple on the table". By contrast, other metaphysical theories merely use the terminology of universals to describe physical entities.
(3) Problem
The problem of universals is an ancient problem in metaphysics concerning the nature of universals, or whether they exist. Part of the problem involves the implications of language use and the complexity of relating language to ontological theory.
"To say of what is, that it is not, or of what is not, that it is, is false; while to say of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not, is true." - Aristotle
Law of Nature or Natural Law
1. General
Natural law, or the law of nature (Latin: lex naturalis), is a system of law that is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature - both social and personal - and deduce binding rules of moral behavior from it.
Although natural law is often conflated with common law, the two are distinct in that natural law is a view that certain rights or values are inherent in or universally cognizable by virtue of human reason or human nature, while common law is the legal tradition whereby certain rights or values are legally cognizable by virtue of judicial recognition or articulation. Natural law theories have, however, exercised a profound influence on the development of English common law, and have featured greatly in the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant.
Because of the intersection between natural law and natural rights, it has been cited as a component in the United States Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, as well as in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, it can be stated that the founding of the United States is based on Natural law.
2. History and Theories
The use of natural law, in its various incarnations, has varied widely through its history. There are a number of different theories of natural law, differing from each other with respect to the role that morality plays in determining the authority of legal norms.
(1) Plato
Although Plato does not have an explicit theory of natural law (he almost never uses the phrase natural law except in Gorgias 484 and Timaeus 83e), his concept of nature, according to John Wild, contains some of the elements found in many natural law theories. According to Plato we live in an orderly universe. At the basis of this orderly universe or nature are the forms, most fundamentally the Form of the Good, which Plato describes as "the brightest region of Being". The Form of the Good is the cause of all things and when it is seen it leads a person to act wisely. In the Symposium, the Good is closely identified with the Beautiful. Also in the Symposium, Plato describes how the experience of the Beautiful by Socrates enables him to resist the temptations of wealth and sex. In the Republic, the ideal community is, "...a city which would be established in accordance with nature."
So we can understand the idea of Nature Law by Plato is:
order = the form of Good = beautifulness = ideal and perfection
(2) Aristotle
Aristotle emphasized the distinction between "nature" (physis, φúσις) on the one hand and "law", "custom", or "convention" (nomos, νóμος) on the other. What the law commanded varied from place to place, but what was "by nature" should be the same everywhere.
A "law of nature" would therefore have had the flavor more of a paradox than something that obviously existed. Against the conventionalism that the distinction between nature and custom could engender, Socrates and his philosophic heirs, Plato and Aristotle, posited the existence of natural justice or natural right. Of these, Aristotle is often said to be the father of natural law.
Aristotle notes that natural justice is a species of political justice, viz. the scheme of distributive and corrective justice that would be established under the best political community; were this to take the form of law, this could be called a natural law, though Aristotle does not discuss this and suggests in the Politics that the best regime may not rule by law at all.
The best evidence of Aristotle's having thought there was a natural law comes from the Rhetoric, where Aristotle notes that, aside from the "particular" laws that each people has set up for itself, there is a "common" law that is according to nature. Specifically, he quotes Sophocles and Empedocles:
“Universal law is the law of Nature. For there really is, as everyone to some extent divines, a natural justice and injustice that is binding on all men, even on those who have no association or covenant with each other.”
It is this that Sophocles' Antigone clearly means when she says that the burial of Polyneices was a just act in spite of the prohibition: she means that it was just by nature:
"Not of to-day or yesterday it is, But lives eternal: none can date its birth."
And so Empedocles, when he bids us kill no living creature, says that doing this is not just for some people while unjust for others:
"Nay, but, an all-embracing law, through the realms of the sky Unbroken it stretched, and over the earth's immensity."
(3) Cicero (106BC~43BC)
Cicero wrote in his De Legibus that both justice and law derive their origin from what nature has given to man, from what the human mind embraces, from the function of man, and from what serves to unite humanity. For Cicero, natural law obliges us to contribute to the general good of the larger society. The purpose of positive laws is to provide for “the safety of citizens, the preservation of states, and the tranquility and happiness of human life.” In this view, “wicked and unjust statutes are anything but laws, because in the very definition of the term law there inheres the idea and principle of choosing what is just and true.”
Law, for Cicero, “ought to be a reformer of vice and an incentive to virtue.” Cicero expressed the view that “the virtues which we ought to cultivate, always tend to our own happiness, and that the best means of promoting them consists in living with men in that perfect union and charity which are cemented by mutual benefits.”
Cicero influenced the discussion of natural law for many centuries to come, up through the era of the American Revolution. The jurisprudence of the Roman Empire was rooted in Cicero, who held an extraordinary grip upon the imagination of posterity as the medium for the propagation of those ideas which informed the law and institutions of the empire. Thomas Aquinas, in his summary of medieval natural law, quoted Cicero’s statement that “nature and custom were the sources of a society's laws”.
(4) Middle Age Christian Views
Those who see biblical support for the doctrine of natural law often point to Paul's Epistle to the Romans: “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.” (Romans 2:14~15). The intellectual historian A. J. Carlyle has commented on this passage, “There can be little doubt that St Paul's words imply some conception analogous to the 'natural law' in Cicero, a law written in men's hearts, recognized by man's reason, a law distinct from the positive law of any State, or from what St Paul recognized as the revealed law of God. It is in this sense that St Paul's words are taken by the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries like St Hilary of Poitiers, St Ambrose, and St Augustine, and there seems no reason to doubt the correctness of their interpretation.”
i Augustine (354~430) and Aquinas (1225~1274)
Some early Church Fathers, especially those in the West, sought to incorporate natural law into Christianity. The most notable among these was Augustine of Hippo, who equated natural law with man's prelapsarian state; as such, a life according to nature was no longer possible and men needed instead to seek salvation through the divine law and grace of Jesus Christ.
In the Twelfth Century, Gratian equated the natural law with divine law. A century later, St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae I-II qq. 90–106, restored Natural Law to its independent state, asserting natural law as the rational creature's participation in the eternal law. Yet, since human reason could not fully comprehend the Eternal law, it needed to be supplemented by revealed Divine law. Meanwhile, Aquinas taught that all human or positive laws were to be judged by their conformity to the natural law.
An unjust law is not a law, in the full sense of the word. It retains merely the 'appearance' of law insofar as it is duly constituted and enforced in the same way a just law is, but is itself a 'perversion of law.' At this point, the natural law was not only used to pass judgment on the moral worth of various laws, but also to determine what the law said in the first place. This principle laid the seed for possible societal tension with reference to tyrants.
The natural law was inherently teleological and deontological in that although it is aimed at goodness, it is entirely focused on the ethicalness of actions, rather than the consequence. The specific content of the natural law was therefore determined by a conception of what things constituted happiness, be they temporal satisfaction or salvation. The state, in being bound by the natural law, was conceived as an institution directed at bringing its subjects to true happiness.
Natural moral law is concerned with both exterior and interior acts, also known as action and motive. Simply doing the right thing is not enough; to be truly moral one's motive must be right as well. For example, helping an old lady across the road (good exterior act) to impress someone (bad interior act) is wrong. However, good intentions don't always lead to good actions. The motive must coincide with the cardinal or theological virtues. Cardinal virtues are acquired through reason applied to nature; they are: prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, while the theological virtues are: faith, hope, charity.
According to Aquinas, to lack any of these virtues is to lack the ability to make a moral choice. For example, consider a man who possesses the virtues of justice, prudence, and fortitude, yet lacks temperance. Due to his lack of self-control and desire for pleasure, despite his good intentions, he will find himself swaying from the moral path.
ii Francisco Suárez (1548~1617)
In the 16th century, the School of Salamanca (Francisco Suárez, Francisco de Vitoria, etc.) further developed a philosophy of natural law. There are five important principles: to live, to learn, to reproduce, to worship God, and to live in an ordered society.
(5) Thomas Hobbes (1588~1679)
By the 17th Century, the Medieval teleological view came under intense criticism from some quarters. Thomas Hobbes instead founded a contractualist theory of legal positivism on what all men could agree upon: what they sought (happiness) was subject to contention, but a broad consensus could form around what they feared (violent death at the hands of another). The natural law was how a rational human being, seeking to survive and prosper, would act. Natural law, therefore, was discovered by considering humankind's natural rights, whereas previously it could be said that natural rights were discovered by considering the natural law. In Hobbes' opinion, the only way natural law could prevail was for men to submit to the commands of the sovereign. Because the ultimate source of law now comes from the sovereign, and the sovereign's decisions need not be grounded in morality, legal positivism is born. Jeremy Bentham's (1748~1832) modifications on legal positivism further developed the theory.
As used by Thomas Hobbes in his 【Leviathan】and【De Cive】, natural law is “a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or takes away the means of preserving the same; and to omit that by which he thinks it may best be preserved.”
According to Hobbes, there are nineteen Laws, expounded in 【Leviathan】:
a. To endeavor peace, as far as hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.
b. To be willing, when others are so too, as for peace and necessary defense of himself, to lay down this right to all things.
c. To perform their covenants made where the law of nature consists the fountain and original of justice.
d. To receive benefit from another of mere grace. Breach of this law is called ingratitude.
e. Sociable Complaisance
f. The caution of the future time, a man ought to pardon the offences past of them that repenting, desire it.
g. Revenge for the sake of the good, not the evil.
The eighth Law is that no man by deed, word, countenance, or gesture, declare hatred or contempt of another. The breach of which law is commonly called contumely.
h. No rights to declare hatred or contempt of another
i. Human’s equalty by nature.
j. To be modest and humble.
k. To be fair and objective by judgment
l. Fair division
m. Usage of draws
n. First-born privilege
o. Peaceful mediation
p. Right submission to arbitrator
q. No man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause
r. No man should serve as a judge in a case if greater profit, honor, or pleasure apparently arises out of the victory of one party, than of the other
s. The balanced of testimony in a disagreement of fact
(6) Liberal natural law – Hugo Grotius (1583~1645)
Liberal natural law grew out of the medieval Christian natural law theories and out of Hobbes’ revision of natural law, sometimes in an uneasy balance of the two.
Hugo Grotius based his philosophy of international law on natural law. In particular, his writings on freedom of the seas and just war theory directly appealed to natural law. About natural law itself, he wrote that “even the will of an omnipotent being cannot change or abrogate” natural law, which “would maintain its objective validity even if we should assume the impossible, that there is no God or that he does not care for human affairs.” (De iure belli ac pacis, Prolegomeni XI). This is the famous argument “etiamsi daremus non esse Deum (even though that God doesn’t exist)”, that made natural law no longer dependent on theology.
(7) John Locke (1632~1704)
Locke turned Hobbes' prescription around, saying that if the ruler went against natural law and failed to protect “life, liberty, and property,” people could justifiably overthrow the existing state and create a new one.
While Locke spoke in the language of natural law, the content of this law was by and large protective of natural rights, and it was this language that later liberal thinkers preferred. Political philosopher Jeremy Waldron has pointed out that Locke's political thought was based on a particular set of Protestant Christian assumptions. To Locke, the content of natural law was identical with biblical ethics as laid down especially in the Decalogue, Christ's teaching and exemplary life, and St. Paul's admonitions. Locke derived the concept of basic human equality, including the equality of the sexes (Adam and Eve), from Genesis 1, 26–28, the starting-point of the theological doctrine of Imago Dei. One of the consequences is that as all humans are created equally free, governments need the consent of the governed. Thomas Jefferson, arguably echoing Locke, appealed to unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The Lockean idea that governments need the consent of the governed was also fundamental to the Declaration of Independence, as the American Revolutionaries used it as justification for their separation from the British crown.
(8) Immanuel Kant (1724~1804)
Kant argued that our experiences are structured by necessary features of our minds. The mind shapes and structures experience so that, on an abstract level, all human experience shares certain essential structural features. Among other things, Kant believed that the concepts of space and time are integral to all human experience, as are our concepts of cause and effect. We never have direct experience of things, the “noumenal (real)” world, and what we do experience is the phenomenal world as conveyed by our senses. These observations summarize Kant’s views upon the subject, object problem.
It always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof. ~【Critique of Practical Reason】
Wenn man wirklich ein moralische waere, habe ich die Existenz Gottes angenom’n, vorausgesetzt, dass nach dem Ende des Lebens nicht alles vorbei sein wuerde. ~【Critique of Judgement】
(9)English jurisprudence
Heinrich A. Rommen remarked upon “the tenacity with which the spirit of the English common law retained the conceptions of natural law and equity which it had assimilated during the Catholic Middle Ages.”
Edward Coke's (1552~1634) discussion of natural law appears in his report of Calvin's Case (1608), “The law of nature is that which God at the time of creation of the nature of man infused into his heart, for his preservation and direction...
The legitimacy or faith of the subject is
a. Due unto the King by the law of nature
b. The law of nature is part of the law of England
c. The law of nature was before any judicial or municipal law
d. The law of nature is immutable.
To support these findings, the assembled judges (as reported by Coke, who was one of them) cited as authorities Aristotle, Cicero, and the Apostle Paul, as well as Bracton, Fortescue, and St. Germain, which formed the forefather of the Rights of Englishmen.
(10) American and contemporary jurisprudence
The U.S. Declaration of Independence (1775) states that it has become necessary for the United States to assume “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them”. Natural law did, however, serve as authority for legal claims and rights in some judicial decisions, legislative acts, and legal pronouncements.
Robert Lowry Clinton argues that the U.S. Constitution rests on a common law foundation and the common law, in turn, rests on a classical natural law foundation.
In contemporary jurisprudence, natural law can refer to the several doctrines:
a. That just laws are immanent in nature; that is, they can be “discovered” or “found”, but can’t be “created” by such as a bill of rights;
b. That they can emerge by the natural process of resolving conflicts, as embodied by the evolutionary process of the common law; or
c. That the meaning of law is such that its content cannot be determined except by reference to moral principles. These meanings can either oppose or complement each other, although they share the common trait that they rely on inherence as opposed to design in finding just laws.
Besides Kantianism and utilitarianism (J. Bentham, s. Legal Norm), natural law jurisprudence has in common with virtue ethics that it is a live option for a first principles ethics theory in analytic philosophy.
(11) Legal positivism (s. Legal Norm)
Natural law jurisprudence is currently undergoing a period of reformulation as legal positivism. The most prominent contemporary natural law jurist, Australian John Finnis, is based in Oxford, but there are also Americans Germain Grisez, Robert P. George, and Canadian Joseph Boyle. All have tried to construct a new version of natural law. The 19th-century anarchist and legal theorist, Lysander Spooner, was also a figure in the expression of modern natural law.
The tensions between the natural law and the positive law have played, and continue to play a key role in the development of international law.
Divine Law
1. Introduction
What makes Divine law such a rewarding area of study is the wide range of Biblical and theological issues which it touches. The study finds its culmination in the person and work of Christ. Like so many other teachings of the Scriptures, we should expect to find the doctrine of Divine law progressively unfolded throughout the history of redemption.
2. Law Before Moses
“Law came by Moses” (Jn. 1:17), to be sure, but of course that is not to say that before Moses there was no law from God. And, in fact, if we would stop to ask the question of the apostle Paul, his answer would be the same: they knew better. It is this very point he expounds at some length in Rom. 1-2. “That which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has showed it to them” (1:19). The knowledge man had (has) of God he has suppressed (1:18ff). That is to say, man’s sin even before Moses took the nature of rebellion. Man “approves” neither of God nor His law (1:28). Against this, God’s law, man universally turned away, and that even in the knowledge of the coming judgment (1:32).
The picture we see of Divine law in the OT, both in pre-Mosaic times and in “extra-Mosaic” contexts is one of inner witness, conscience. God’s image in man impresses within him an intuitive sense of right and wrong. Formal code or no, it was a sufficiently clear rule of life which all men, in varying degrees, have both obeyed and suppressed. And it is to this that men were and are justly held accountable.
3. Law Through Moses
So the law was given formally through Moses because of the unique relationship into which God was entering with Israel. But that relationship, we find, had a purpose. It was not an end in itself. It was established for the purpose of demonstrating something essential to the outworking of God’s redemptive program.
Here was a law given which demanded obedience for life (Lev. 18:5; Deut. 27:26). That raises yet another question: Did not God promise to Abraham that His blessing would come by grace? How could law, with all its curses, enter where grace had already been promised?
Paul takes up this question in Gal. 3. “The law is not of faith, but ‘The man who does them shall live by them’” (3:12; citing Lev. 18:5). Moreover, “if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise” (3:18). That is, law speaks of works, not faith. By very definition and upon threat of condemnation, law demands absolute obedience. “But God gave it to Abraham by promise. What purpose then does the law serve” (Gal 3:18b-19a)? That is, why did God insert law after He had already made the promise of grace? Surely, the law, coming later, could not annul the promise (v. 17)! But why add law, with its rigorous demands and threats, when grace has already been announced?
Answer: the law was “added because of transgression” (v. 19b). That is, the law’s purpose was to objectify sin and thereby demonstrate it as “transgression.” This is Paul’s statement in Rom. 5:13 also: “Sin is not recorded where there is no law.” The idea in both of these passages is that of itemization, objectification, delineation. The purpose of the law was to specify sin with clarity.
But this He did only “until the seed came” (v. 19), “before faith came” (v. 23). The law functioned as Israel’s “schoolmaster unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (v. 24). That is to say, by establishing the fact of human sinfulness, men are driven to Christ, the only alternative.
4. Divine Law in New Covenant Age
Moses’ law, then, served a very significant purpose in the Divine schema. It reaches its “end” in Christ (Rom.10:4).
And what of us who are related to God under the terms not of the Old but of the New Covenant? Is there a codification of law for us?
When Paul speaks of the law as a rule of life, he insists that we must not allow a man to be judged on Mosaic grounds (e.g., Col. 2:16). He repeatedly speaks of it in the past tense. The law had its purpose, it served that purpose, and now it is passed away. Indeed, this was both a matter of heated dispute in the early church and of unified pronouncement by the apostolic company (Acts 15). With the covenant itself abolished, its law (Ex. 34:27-28) is likewise no longer in force.
It would be wrong to forget this stated, essential unity of the old covenant, Decalogue, when reading NT statements of the covenant’s abolition (e.g., 2 Cor. 3). The statements are as broad and inclusive as they appear. And this is to be expected. The new covenant believer is not under the old covenant but the new.
5. Moses’ Law Fulfilled
1. Interpretation
It is precisely this point which again directs our attention to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not that there is no law. Rather, Moses is “fulfilled” (Mat. 5:17). In this regard, Matthew 5:17-21 is of primary significance.
In other words, Jesus’ Lordship extends even over Moses. It is no longer Moses, but Jesus who informs our conscience. It is His moral instruction that shapes our lives and defines true sanctification. Divine law continues but not in its Mosaic formulation. Christ supersedes Moses. This is no “destroying” of Moses but rather his “fulfilling” (Mat. 5:17; cf. Deut. 18:15-19). Christ has taken morals a step higher, above Moses. From Him we learn God’s highest expression of holiness.
Christ fulfills and stands above all that came before Him. Unlike the Scribes whose highest appeal was to Moses, Jesus teaches on His own authority, an authority that is unique (Mat. 7:29).
Legal Norm
1. Defining ‘Purity’ of Legal Science – Legal Positivism
Firstly, it would be 'pure' in a sense analogous to that in Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. It would set out a priori a 'pure part' of legal science, consisting of a framework of fundamental concepts. Then, in an empirical part of legal science, this framework would be applied to empirical (sociological, historical and so on) material so as to understand that material as ‘law’.
Legal science, as Bentham, Austin (John Austin, 1790~1859), Hart (Herbert Hart, 1907~1992), and Kelsen (Hans Kelsen, 1881~1973) would like it to be, has to describe a legal norm without either evaluating it or adopting it as an evaluation. This can be done by distinguishing rigorously between the social statement that is the norm itself and the legal-scientific restatement of it or is contained in, a description of the norm. Kelsen terms the norm itself a ‘legal norm (Rechtsnorm)’ and its descriptive restatement a ‘legal proposition (Rechtssatz)’. Thus, when a jurist (legal scientist) states that the law of a certain country contains the norm 'theft is to be punished with imprisonment', this legal proposition is not a comment on whether anybody in that country has a moral or other extra-legal obligation to impose, accept or evade such a penalty.
This kind of 'purity' already excludes ideas of natural law, in which description and evaluation are intimately connected. That leaves as the subject matter of legal science only positive law.
2. Legal Orders
As for other central European positivist contemporaries, norms occur not singly but in sets, termed orders, not ‘static’, but ‘dynamic’, e.g. the principles of modern civil laws are ‘from status to contract’.
At the same time, the ‘hierarchy model’ does not readily fit a common-law system. It takes as its paradigm a single constitutional document under which codes and statutes are enacted, with both administration and adjudication in subordinate places.
3. Basic Norm (Grundnorm)
Kelsen assumes, however, that the scientific representation of a positive-legal order, as a hierarchy of legal propositions, must have a guarantor of unity.
a. The unity must be ‘elliptical’.
b. Material should be as an order of positive law
c. The historically and revolutionarily first constitution is to be obeyed, nothing to do with moral or other extra-legal values where the jurist does not evaluate the circumstances.
d. Ideas of natural law are also excluded by positivism rejection of metaphysics in a strong sense, supposing something supra-human. He similarly rejects duplication in ideas of 'the state' as a supra-human entity - rather than a mere, fictional personification of the national legal order.
4. Problems
a. Why should the law be obeyed? The power of laws is to be doubted.
b. What is proved to be ‘basic’?
And there Kelsen ended, committed to an epistemology that was so radically relativistic as to challenge the very idea of authorisation. Nonetheless, if Kelsen does not provide an effective answer to the obedience question, he has posed that question - and many others - with exceptional sophistication.
5. General Theory of Norms?
From the mid-1960s until his death in 1973, Kelsen branched out into general theory of norms. In a longer view, it was a return to his youthful passion for philosophy. His notes on this were published posthumously in 1979 as Allgemeine Theorie der Normen and appeared in English translation in 1990 as General Theory of Norms. This work, however, neither offers a completed general theory of norms nor goes far toward locating the Pure Theory of Law within a general theory of norms.
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