Adolf Julius Merkl

Adolf Julius Merkl ( Ferdinand Welz )

Adolf Julius Merkl (born March 23, 1890 in Vienna ; † August 22, 1970 ibid) was an Austrian scholar of constitutional and administrative law . As a pupil of Hans Kelsen, he was one of the most important representatives of the Viennese school of legal theory. Merkl was from 1932 to 1938 and again from 1950 university professor at the University of Vienna , in between from 1943 to 1950 at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen .

Act

With his work on the gradual structure of the legal system , Merkl has contributed significantly to the success of the pure legal theory as an aid to understanding the connection between norms of a legal system. Merkl explained that every legal act has both law-generating and law-enforcing elements. Thus, within the framework prescribed by law, a judgment establishes justice and does not merely execute it. A simple law also enforces (constitutional) law, as it can only be set within the framework given by the constitutional law. Merkl called this the “ Janus-faced ” or “double legal face” of the legal act. Within positive law, therefore, it is not possible to distinguish exactly between law-making and enforcement.

While another Kelsen student, Alfred Verdroß , turned away from Hans Kelsen's legal positivism at an early age and founded the Viennese school of international law and legal philosophy, which was shaped by natural law, Adolf Julius Merkl only turned away from pure legal positivism due to his experience with authoritarian and totalitarian regimes and passionately advocated the addition of legal ethics to legal theory.

Merkl's grave of honor is located in the Vienna Central Cemetery (group 32 C, number 56).

Awards

1967 Honorary doctorate from the University of Salzburg
1968 City of Vienna Prize for Humanities

literature

Herbert Schambeck: Merkl, Adolf Julius. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 157 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Literature by and about Adolf Julius Merkl in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

↑ See Adolf Merkl: For the 80th birthday of Hans Kelsen: Pure legal theory and moral order . In: Austrian Journal for Public Law , Volume 11, New Series (1961), pp. 293–313, here: p. 313.

personal data
SURNAME	Merkl, Adolf Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Austrian constitutional and administrative lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH	March 23, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH	Vienna
DATE OF DEATH	22nd August 1970
Place of death	Vienna

[1] See Adolf Merkl: For the 80th birthday of Hans Kelsen: Pure legal theory and moral order . In: Austrian Journal for Public Law , Volume 11, New Series (1961), pp. 293–313, here: p. 313.