Hans Kelsen Werke

Volume 8 of Hans Kelsen Werke contains the first legal commentary of the Austrian Federal Constitution of 1920, co-authored by Hans Kelsen (1881-1973), Georg Froehlich (1872-1939) and Adolf Julius Merkl (1890-1970), and published in 1922. It is a locus classicus and standard literature on the Bundes-Verfassungsgesetz 1920 that is still used by constitutional lawyers today. All three authors were important expert participants in the constitution's drafting and had intimate knowledge of the text, its genesis and subject matter. This commentary is also the fifth part of Kelsen's series of commentaries on the new Austrian republican constitutional order. Together with parts one to four (contained in Volume 5 of HKW), which concerned the 1918-1920 transitional constitutional arrangements, and his judgeship in Austria's constitutional court, it cemented Kelsen's standing as Austria's leading scholar of constitutional law.