Stateless Law: Kelsen's Conception and its Limits

Hans Kelsen’s claim that the state and the law are identicalis surrounded by a somewhat mystical air. Yet, the ‘identitythesis’ loses much of its mystical aura when it is seenas an attempt to recast the state, qua social fact, in deontologicalterms. The state is seen as a condition necessary to accountfor the validity of legal acts. Indeed, the meaning of the stateis reduced to the function performed by a conception of orderin the reproduction of a system of norms. No further socialfact would attest to its existence. From a sociological pointof view, all law is essentially, and principally, law sans state.