Ústav státu a práva AV ČR, v. v. i. a Centre for Law and Public Affairs (CeLAPA)
vás srdečně zve na přednášku:
“The Role of Purity in Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law”, kterou přednese prof. Stanley L. Paulson (Kiel and St. Louis) dne 30. března 2017od 14:00hod v místnosti č. 38 na půdě Právnické fakulty Univerzity Karlovy. Přednášku a následující debatu bude moderovat a s prof. Paulsonem bude diskutovat prof. George Pavlakos.
Abstract: In the arts and in science, as well as in deeds and in action, everything depends on comprehending the objects purely and treating them in accordance with their nature. Hans Kelsen’s quotation from Goethe, adorning one of the title pages of Constitutional Theory (1925), underscores the significance he attributes to purity as the fundamental motif in his legal philosophy. And the attribution is instructive. For purity lies at the very core of Kelsen’s enterprise. Indeed, more than any other concept or doctrine in the Kelsenian colossus, purity lends shape to his legal philosophy-and this both in terms of what Kelsen develops in its name, a “normativistic” legal philosophy, and in terms of what, following up on the strictures stemming from purity, he precludes, namely, both fact-based legal positivism and natural law theory. Normativism, empowerment as the fundamental modality, and legal interpretation recas t as legal cognition are motifs of Kelsen’s that lend themselves to explanation in terms of purity. I take up these motifs in my lecture, relating the motif in each instance to purity.
Professor Stanley L. Paulson is an internationally recognized authority on 20th-century European legal philosophy and legal theory with special attention to the Viennese legal philosopher Hans Kelsen, considered by many “the jurist of the century.” Professor Paulson delivered the academic keynote address at a session in the Upper House of the Austrian Federal Parliament honoring Kelsen on his 125th birthday. Professor Paulson, who writes and lectures in both German and English, has published more than 170 articles and reviews and, over the past 15 years, has delivered guest lectures at more than 80 universities on five continents. Recent lectures include Oxford, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Genoa, Vienna, Graz, Freiburg, and Cologne. Together with his wife, Bonnie Litschewski Paulson, he has published books with the Oxford University Press; they presently h old three contracts from the Press for books on and by Kelsen. In additional to his law degree, Paulson holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, as well as honorary doctorates from the faculties of law at the University of Uppsala in Sweden and from the University of Kiel in Germany, where he has continuing professional ties. He has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and post-doctoral awards here and abroad, granted by, among others, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Fulbright Commission (in Paris, Bonn, Vienna, and Jerusalem), the Max Planck Society, the German Research Endowment (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. In 2003, he received the prestigious Humboldt Research Prize, awarded in Berlin, for “distinguished scholarship in the humanities.” In the summer of 2010, Paulson was in residence in Canberra at the Faculty of Law, Australian National University, as John Fleming Visiting Research Fellow.