Alf Ross

Works

• 1951Tû-Tû

  Short essay on an invented island people who believe that whoever breaks a taboo becomes “tû-tû” and must be purified: legal words such as “ownership” likewise refer to nothing in themselves but link certain facts to certain consequences.

• 1953On Law and Justice

  Systematic legal theory of Scandinavian realism: valid law is the body of norms that judges actually experience as binding and apply, so statements about valid law are predictions of court decisions; “justice” without further content expresses emotion.

Position

Ross is on the map as a leading, systematic theorist of Scandinavian legal realism, which joined Hägerström’s critique of metaphysics with the empiricism of the Vienna Circle. In “On Law and Justice” (1953) he defined valid law as the set of norms that actually operate in the minds of judges, who feel bound by them and apply them; a statement about valid law is therefore a prediction, with a certain probability, of how the courts will decide. Concepts such as ownership or claim refer to nothing in themselves – his essay “Tû-Tû” compares them to the taboo word of an invented tribe – but serve to link sets of facts with sets of legal consequences. Natural law and appeals to “justice” without further content he regarded as expressions of emotion that can be used to justify any demand. In logic he observed that from “you ought to post the letter” one seems entitled to infer “you ought to post the letter or burn it”; this “Ross’s paradox” became a test case for deontic logic. H. L. A. Hart’s review of 1959 questioned whether legal validity can be reduced to predictions and feelings of being bound, a debate that shaped legal philosophy after both. Ross also wrote influential books on democracy and on international law.

Life & context

Alf Ross was born on 10 June 1899 in Copenhagen and studied law there, graduating in 1922. He then worked in Vienna with Hans Kelsen, whose pure theory of law shaped his early thought. When the University of Copenhagen rejected his dissertation on the sources of law, he went to Uppsala, where he studied with Axel Hägerström and took a doctorate in philosophy in 1929; Copenhagen awarded him a doctorate in law in 1934. From 1938 to 1969 he was professor at the law faculty of the University of Copenhagen, teaching constitutional and international law and legal philosophy. From 1959 to 1971 he was a judge of the European Court of Human Rights. He died in Copenhagen on 17 August 1979.

Further main works

• Theorie der Rechtsquellen (1929)
• Virkelighed og Gyldighed i Retslæren (1934)
• Imperatives and Logic (Theoria 7, 1941)
• Hvorfor Demokrati? (1946; Why Democracy?, 1952)
• Directives and Norms (1968)