In 1934, the Austrian thinker Hans Kelsen continued the positivist custom in his guide the Pure Theory of Law. Kelsen believed that though law is separate from morality, it is endowed with “normativity”, which means we must obey it. While legal guidelines are constructive “is” statements (e.g. the fine for reversing on a highway is €500); law tells us what we “should” do. Thus, each legal system can be hypothesised to have a basic norm instructing us to obey. Kelsen’s main opponent, Carl Schmitt, rejected each positivism and the idea of the rule of law as a outcome of he did not settle for the primacy of summary normative principles over concrete political positions and decisions. Therefore, Schmitt advocated a jurisprudence of the exception , which denied that authorized norms might encompass all of the political experience.
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