Kelsen published this short treatise in 1934, ¹ when the neo-
Kantian influence on his work was at its zenith. An earlier,
'constructivist' phase, evident in his Habilitationsschrift of
1911, ² had been displaced over the course of the following
decade by his effort, albeit in fits and starts, to provide
something approximating a neo-Kantian foundation for his
theory. After 1934, Kelsen began to introduce concepts from the
empiricist's repertoire, taking over in some of his writings
Hume's analysis of causality, for example, and arguing that an
a priori category of causation would be a step in the wrong
direction, away from Hume. ³ Finally, after 1960, Kelsen threw
over much of the Pure Theory of Law as we know it from his
second and third phases, introducing elements of a volitional or
'will' theory of law to take its place.

If Kelsen's second, neo-Kantian phase represents the Pure
Theory of Law in its most characteristic form, then this treatise
may well be its central text. And of Kelsen's many statements of
the Pure Theory, this one is surely the most accessible.

Translations of the 1934 treatise into Japanese, Bulgarian,
Portuguese, and Spanish appeared within a few years of the
original, German-language edition. In the first decade after the
Second World War, it was also translated into Chinese, Korean,
Italian, and French. ⁴ A translation into Arabic was published in

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