Hans Kelsen, the second world war and the U.S. government

Thomas Olechowski

pp. 101-112

in: Hans Kelsen in America, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

In 1944 and 1945, Hans Kelsen worked as a legal advisor for two federal institutions of the United States, namely the Foreign Economic Administration and the Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army. He participated in several meetings and wrote a number of memoranda concerning international law. In 2012 and 2013, four of these memoranda could be located at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and at the Hans Kelsen Institute in Vienna, Austria. These memoranda concern the question of the international status of Germany and Austria after the war, the persecution of war criminals under retroactive laws and also the question whether war of aggression was a war crime. Taken together, they illustrate a little-known side of Kelsen's biography: The implementation of his legal theory into legal practice.

Cited authors

Kelsen Hans