Law, peace, and world order: Hans Kelsen’s global thought in the 1940s

In the mid-twentieth century, the jurist Hans Kelsen envisaged a new legal and political international order. His global thinking revolved around his idea of a ‘world state’ as a means to preserve peace. The article contends that Kelsen’s ideas on global legal and political order and a world state in the 1940s drew on his intellectual biography and on his earlier theoretical writings on order in the national scale. Another important source for understanding Kelsen’s global thinking is his critique of the Chicago World Constitution Draft, a mid-century project which proposed the establishment of a federal world state. As this study shows, Kelsen’s global thinking is characterised by a multi-scalar logic and an emphasis on positive law as the foundation of political and legal order. These elements render his ideas distinct in the historical trajectory of modern global thought, and deserve the attention of global historians today.