Society and Nature: A Sociological Inquiry

2000. ISBN-13: 9781584770640; ISBN-10: 1584770643. Kelsen, Hans. Society and Nature: A Sociological Inquiry. London: K. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., [1946]. viii, 391 pp. Reprinted 2000, 2009 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN-13: 9781584770640; ISBN-10: 1584770643. Hardcover with dust jacket. New. $54.95 * This interesting work offers a sociological and ethnographic perspective on Kelsen's juristic thinking. His central thesis, which ranges over the history of humanity, argues that the idea of causality developed from primitive ideas of retribution. He shows how early man developed his interpretation of nature through the laws of retribution and causality, then developed our current concept of nature and society over time. He holds that the gradual emancipation of the law of causality from the principle of retribution is "the emancipation from a social interpretation of nature," a process "very important from the point of view of intellectual history." (Introduction viii). Society and Nature was originally published in 1943 to mixed reviews. It deserves a fresh appraisal for its original ideas and insights into Kelsen's theory of pure positive law outlined in Pure Theory of Law and General Theory of Law and State. Possibly the most influential jurisprudent of the twentieth century, Hans Kelsen [1881-1973] was legal adviser to Austria's last emperor and its first republican government, the founder and permanent advisor of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Austria, and the author of Austria's Constitution, which was enacted in 1920, abolished during the Anschluss, and restored in 1945. He was the author of more than forty books on law and legal philosophy. Active as a teacher in Europe and the United States, he was Dean of the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna and taught at the universities of Cologne and Prague, the Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Harvard, Wellesley, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Naval War College.