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I am very grateful to Jörg Kammerhofer for his engagement with my text. Not only does he know Kelsen's main writings on legal theory very well, but he is himself a Kelsenian scholar. One is led, therefore, to speculate on the extent to which his reply comes close to what Kelsen himself would have written in respect of my article, and more generally in respect of the book on which it is based.
Despite its being a very different debate as to its content, I was reminded of another exchange of views, which took place almost a century ago, when reading his reply. I refer to the controversial exchange between Hans Kelsen and Eugen Ehrlich, on the occasion of the former's review of Ehrlich's Foundation of the Sociology of Law (1913).
With characteristic sharpness Kelsen�s review dismissed the whole of Ehrlich's pro ject. He asserted that a sociology of law in the manner Ehrlich proposed it was impossible, without quite disclosing the grounds on which he based such a forceful critique. Instead, Kelsen had recourse to an argument about Ehrlich's "syncretism of methods" and, despite his text running to almost 40 pages in length, he refused to engage with Ehrlich's work on its own terms.
At the end of his rejoinder, Ehrlich complained that "Kelsen's critique gives absolutely no idea of the actual content of my book". I felt the same absence of engagement with my wider argument in Kammerhofer's text, and although I understand both Kelsen's and Kammerhofer's standpoint in protecting their particular project, I cannot fail to point to the limitations, not to say narrowness
