The Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy and Law presents a book launch with Dr. Christoph Kletzer's new book 'The Idea of a Pure Theory of Law'. The event will be chaired by Professor Tim Macklem (King's College London) and Professor John Gardner (All Souls, Oxford University) will be speaking. 
 
About the Book: 

Most contemporary legal philosophers tend to take force to be an accessory to the law. According to this prevalent view the law primarily consists of a series of demands made on us; force, conversely, comes into play only when these demands fail to be satisfied. This book claims that this model should be jettisoned in favour of a radically different one: according to the proposed view, force is not an accessory to the law but rather its attribute. The law is not simply a set of rules incidentally guaranteed by force, but it should be understood as essentially rules about force. 

The book explores in detail the nature of this claim and develops its corollaries. It then provides an overview of the contemporary jurisprudential debates relating to force and violence, and defends its claims against well-known counter-arguments by Hart, Raz and others.

This book offers an innovative insight into the concept of Pure Theory. In contrast to what was claimed by Hans Kelsen, the most eminent contributor to this theory, the author argues that the core insight of the Pure Theory is not to be found in the concept of a basic norm, or in the supposed absence of a conceptual relation between law and morality, but rather in the fundamental and comprehensive reformulation of how to model the functioning of the law intended as an ordering of force and violence.

Biography:

Dr Christoph Kletzer is a Senior Lecturer in Legal Philosophy. He joined King's in 2007 having previously been a Lecturer at the University of Cambridge (2005-2007) and before that at the University of Durham (2004-2005). Dr Kletzer has also been the Director of Studies in Philosophy at Queens College in Cambridge and has been lecturing at the Philosophy Department of the University of Vienna for the last two years. He graduated with a MA in Law and a MA in Philosophy from the University of Vienna. After that he obtained a LLM and PhD from the University Cambridge.

Dr Kletzer's research has been in the areas of Legal, Moral and Political Philosophy. His main interests lie in German Idealism (mainly Fichte and Hegel) and the legal and political thought of the Weimar Republic (focusing on Kelsen and Schmitt). He is particularly interested in the intersections of contemporary metaphysics and epistemology with legal theory.

This event is open to the public and everybody is welcome to attend, though everyone must register.

A drinks reception will follow the lecture.

Seats are allocated on a strictly first come, first served basis. 

If you find you can no longer attend please cancel your ticket registration so that someone else can have your place.