Kelsen: Formalism, Efficacy, and Acceptability
For my dear advisees, especially for Vitor Marcellino and Pollyane Leitão Kelsen establishes three requisites for a legal norm to be said to be valid. The first one is its belonging to an existing legal system, that is its legality . The second one is its containing of a sanction or connection to other norm which contains a sanction, that is its coercion . The third one is its being obeyed, that is its efficacy . Kelsen also states that his pure theory of law is formal, which means that it admits of any content to be law and its requisites are completely void of content. In the case of the third requisite for the validity of legal norms, that is efficacy, we can challenge Kelsen’s belief that such requisite is indeed formal by reasoning as follows: a) if a requisite is to be formal, it must make no distinction among different possible contents; b) if the requisite of efficacy is to be formal, then efficacy must make no distinction among different possible contents of norms; c...