KELSEN, Hans.

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Österreichisches Staatsrecht. First edition of Kelsen's major case study about public law and its evolution, developed for his homeland Austria.Kelsen (1881-1973), born in Prague, published his first book on Dante's theory of the state in 1908, and his first major work on the theory of public law in 1911. By 1919 Kelsen had become professor of law at the University of Vienna, and was called on to draft the official constitution of Austria (where his outline effectively remains in function today). Suffering from anti-Semitic prejudice throughout his early career, he moved first from Vienna to Cologne in 1930, then to Geneva in 1933, and finally emigrated to the United States in 1940, where he lectured at Harvard before eventually becoming a professor at Berkeley. He died, perhaps the most respected legal theorist of his century, at the age of 92. His construction of a "pure theory of law", prescinded from metaphysical, normative, sociological, political, historical, and economic considerations, has aroused more response - ranging from enthusiastic acceptance to vehement rejection - than the work of any other jurist in the history of modern legal thought.

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