Kammerhofer Jörg. Uncertainty in International Law: A Kelsenian perspective

Routledge, 2011. — 303 p. — ISBN: 0-203-84721In this regard, the present book is quite remarkable. Its author is courageous enough to confess unconditional (but note: never uncritical!) adherence to a legal theory which has set up an intellectual Reinheitsgebot that very few academics, even in Hans Kelsen’s Viennese home turf, are still willing, or able, to follow. Kammerhofer’s is a lone voice in the current theoretical wilderness characterizing international law and his Uncertainty in International Law is about as far apart from the international legal mainstream as one can get, but I think this is precisely
where its author wants it to be. In a genuine tour de force, Kammerhofer sets out to prove that the Pure Theory of Law is capable of helping us to overcome fundamental uncertainties that have long plagued international legal scholarship, and he succeeds to a surprising extent. As a kind of ‘anti-Brownlie’, he manages to demonstrate that stringent theoretical thinking can help to solve practical problems. What I find particularly interesting (and also a little amusing at times) is that, whenever the author finds it to be necessary, he does not shy away from defending
Kelsen’s Pure Theory even against its creator. In essence, the added value of Kammerhofer’s work is that it does not simply describe the Reine Rechtslehre, as others have done also recently and quite well, but actually applies it to a number of highly topical issues. In so doing, the author ruffles many scholarly feathers, among them mine, but I (only slightly indignantly) admire him for that. Kammerhofer’s Uncertainty in International Law is one of the books that makes one re-consider established concepts, and it is precisely for that that it deserves attention and recognition.