STEFAN HAMMER

Unlike other legal theorists of a positivist bent, Kelsen placed essential
reliance on epistemological arguments in defending legal positivism. For
him, strictly limiting legal science and legal reasoning to the positive law
counted as a corollary of a sound theory of knowledge. And it is this par-
ticular feature of Kelsen's theory that is especially deserving of our atten-
tion, presenting as it does a pointed argument in reply to those who
would reject the view that the jurist's focus be restricted to the positive
law.

In reconsidering the limits that Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law imposes
on what a jurist may justifiably say, we have to concentrate on the doc-
trine of the basic norm as the keystone of his theory of a legal science that
has been purged of metaphysics and methodological syncretism. Taking
as their point of departure Kelsen's epistemological claim and his cri-
tique of legal method, a number of recent writers in the field have con-
sidered once again the question of the neo-Kantian roots of his concept
of the basic norm and, thus, of his legal theory in general. ¹ Indeed, it is

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