Hans Kelsen and the Austrian academic culture

In the first half of the 20th century, Vienna developed its own academic culture, which is expressed in the field of law and political science in particular by the Vienna School of Legal Theory founded by Hans Kelsen. In October 2023, to mark the 50th anniversary of Hans Kelsen`s death, the Hans Kelsen Institute Vienna (Federal Foundation), in cooperation with the Research Centre for Legal Source Research (FRQ) of the University of Vienna and the Institute for Cultural Studies (IKW) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, organized a one-day symposium at the Administrative Court dedicated to this Austrian academic culture and its special features in the field of constitutional and legal studies. Building on the symposium, the contributions in this volume examine the role played by the cultural heritage of the Habsburg Monarchy in the development of an Austrian academic culture in the field of law, and the extent to which female academics were involved in the development of Hans Kelsen`s theory of law and democracy, the extent to which the various academic circles - in particular the Vienna School of Economics, which was personally close to Kelsen - influenced each other, the role played by the then fashionable philosophical trend of phenomenology and the role of the so-called left-wing Catholics in the circle around Hans Kelsen. left-wing Catholics played in the circle around Hans Kelsen.