This volume explores the reasons for Hans Kelsen's

lack of influence in the United States and proposes ways in which Kelsen's

approach to law, philosophy, and political, democratic, and international

relations theory could be relevant to current debates within the U.S. academy

in those areas. Along the way, the volume examines Kelsen's relationship and

often hidden influences on other members of the mid-century Central European

émigré community whose work helped shape twentieth-century social science in the

United States.
The book includes major

contributions to the history of ideas and to the sociology of the professions

in the U.S. academy in the twentieth century. Each section of the volume

explores a different aspect of the puzzle of the neglect of Kelsen's work in

various disciplinary and national settings.

Part I provides reconstructions of Kelsen's legal theory and defends

that theory against negative assessments in Anglo-American jurisprudence.
Part II focuses both on Kelsen's theoretical

views on international law and his practical involvement in the post-war

development of international criminal law.
Part III addresses Kelsen's theories of

democracy and justice while placing him in dialogue with other major

twentiethcentury thinkers, including two fellow émigré scholars, Leo Strauss

and Albert Ehrenzweig. Part IV explores Kelsen's intellectual legacies through

European and American perspectives on the interaction of Kelsen's theoretical

approach to law and national legal traditions in the United States and Germany.

Each contribution features a particular

applications of Kelsen's approach to doctrinal and interpretive issues

currently of interest in the legal academy.

The volume concludes with two chapters on the nature of Kelsen's legal

theory as an instance of modernism.