Stanley L. Paulson: The Great Puzzle: Kelsen's Basic Norm
Seminar: Thursday 27 May, 5.30-7.30, Level 4 Common Room, New Law Building.
The puzzle stemming from Hans Kelsen's basic norm might be conceptualised in
the form of a dilemma: If the idea of 'grounding' the law or providing a
foundation for the law is taken seriously as the task Kelsen accords to the
basic norm, then the dilemma might look like this: Either the characterisation
chosen from among more than a dozen arguably distinct characterisations of the
basic norm provides nothing remotely like a 'grounding' of the law but
generates instead a petitio principii, a begging of the question, or - the
other horn of the dilemma - this or that Kantian or Neo-Kantian
characterisation does appear to imply the 'grounding' function of the basic
norm, but no sound Kantian or Neo-Kantian argument in support of the
'grounding' function is forthcoming. Paulson will take up a number of matters
adumbrated in this statement of the dilemma, to wit: Kelsen's various
characterisations of the basic norm, the petitio principii arising from many
characterisations, the failure of the Kantian or Neo-Kantian transcendental
argument as applied in legal science, and, finally, an explication of the basic
norm on the model of Kant's regulative principle, which, Paulson argues, lends
a grounding function to the basic norm.
Stanley L. Paulson,Washington University, St Louis and University of Kiel
Paulson attended the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate, majoring in
philosophy (B.A.). He took graduate degrees in philosophy at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison (M.A., Ph.D.) and a law degree at Harvard University (J.D.).
Paulson began his teaching career in the Department of Philosophy at Washington
University in St. Louis in the fall of 1972. He was granted tenure at the
University in 1978 and was appointed at the School of Law in 1983. He was
appointed William Gardiner Hammond Professor of Law in 2000.
He has held a number of post-doctoral fellowships, including awards from the
National Endowment for the Humanities (Washington, D.C.), the Fulbright
Commission (Washington, D.C. and Vienna), the Max Planck Society (Munich), the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Bonn - Bad Godesberg), and the Rockefeller
Foundation (New York).
Paulson's specialty is European legal philosophy and legal theory, and he has
written a great deal on the work of the legal philosopher and constitutional
theorist Hans Kelsen. Paulson writes in English and in German, and his work has
been translated into seven foreign languages.
Helen Irving | Professor | Faculty of Law, University of Sydney SYDNEY, NSW
2006 | Tel: +61293510232 | Fax: +61293510200
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