Noch einmal: Stanley L. Paulson und Kelsens urteilstheoretischer Normbegriff

Kelsen’s theory of legal norms can be assessed adequately only if his writings are assigned to different phases. Contrary to Stanley L. Paulson’s view, there is a radical break in the genesis of the theory around 1940, when Kelsen abandons the specific neo-Kantian thesis that the general legal norm is identical with the hypothetical judgment of legal science in favour of a rather naïve conception, according to which the judgment of legal science simply reproduces the pre-existing legal norm on a descriptive level. By reading this simple correspondence theory of truth of the later period into Kelsen’s writings of the twenties, Paulson misses the central thesis of Kelsen’s neo-Kantianism.