Hans Kelsen and the Case for Democracy

Hans Kelsen has long deserved greater anglophone recognition for his profound and distinctive perspective on democracy. Sandrine Baume's scholarly and readable book is straightforwardly the best work written about Kelsen's defence of democracy to date. Her nuanced emphasis on Kelsen's defence of toleration, autonomy and compromise as constitutive elements of the democratic process make Kelsen relevant to any discussion of constitutionalism, every philosophy of law, and all critiques of autocracy. -- Richard Whatmore, University of Sussex

Kelsen is for lawyers what Einstein is for physicists: the founder of a theory of relativity that has dramatically changed our worldview. It is a far less known fact that Kelsen was also a theoretician of democracy of equally great significance, whose work remains relevant to this day. Sandrine Baume deserves praise for having recognised Kelsen's theory of democracy, elaborated over a multitude of his writings, in all its completely unrealised potential. One embarks with her work on an intellectual adventure, at the end of which the reader realises how Kelsen's positivist theory of law and his pluralistic theory of democracy fit together in a coherent whole. -- Matthias Jestaedt, University of Freiburg

Sandrine Baume is a political philosopher and a historian of ideas. She is currently an associate professor at the Centre for Public Law in the Faculty of Law and Criminal Justice at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her research focuses particularly on the theory of the democratic state: its institutions, its rules, and its values. Among her recent publications are La transparence dans la conduite des affaires publiques: Origines et sens d'une exigence (Raison publique, 2011); On Political Theology: A Controversy between Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt (History of European Ideas, 2009) and Carl Schmitt, penseur de l'Etat: Genèse d'une doctrine (Presses de Sciences Po, 2008).