Hans Kelsen, the Theory of Law and the International Legal.pdfVIP

Hans Kelsen, the Theory of Law and the International Legal System: A Talk Norberto Bobbio and Danilo Zolo* 1 Meeting Kelsen D.Z I believe you met Kelsen only once, in Paris in 1957. Do you remember anything particular about that meeting? N.B. Thats true, the only time I actually met Kelsen was In Paris in 1957 . The occasion was an international seminar organized by the Institut International de Philosophie Politique, with Rene David in the chair and Raymond Polin, the real promoter of the initiative, as secretary. I immediately signed up . I may not have taken part in the first of the meetings, but I did attend all of the later ones, which were held at the Fondation Thiers in Paris. They were fairly restricted seminars, with around twenty people taking part . The proceedings of the meetings were subsequently published in the Annales de philosophie politique, published by PUF Paris. The theme for 19 5 7 was le droit naturel. D.Z. Did you have any other contacts, for instance by letter, with Kelsen? N.B. No. I recall only that at the Paris meeting Kelsen showed he appreciated the arguments in my report on natural law. And I recall that in his Allgemeine Theorie der Normen, in the 1979 Vienna edition, he comments, in part critically, on a text I had written before the Paris meeting, namely Considerations introductives sur le ralsonnement des juristes, published in the Revue Internationale de Philosophie in 1954. Someone who knew Kelsen better than I, and earlier, was my friend Renato Treves, another disciple of Gioele Solari. D.Z. Yet it is you who is regarded as the real importer ofKelsenism into Italy. N.B. In fact it was Renato Treves, who as long ago as 1934 ha