Ross, Alf (1899–1979)

The Danish legal philosopher Alf Ross formed a link between Scandinavian and American legal realists, on one hand, and the scientific ethos of Hans Kelsen (1881–1973), on the other. Like the Scandinavian realists, Ross represented an energetically antimetaphysical orientation to legal study. To the extent that law had reality—that is, to the extent one could submit it to scientific study—it was to be understood by reference to the sense of psychological compulsion that its prescriptive sentences created.

Like American legal realists, Ross thought that the most significant place in which this compulsion took place was in the minds of judges. Similar to Kelsen (whom he greatly admired), Ross was interested in the conditions of validity of statements about law, though as with realists, he identified them largely (though not exclusively) with the empirical truth of statements about the behavior of judges. Rule formulations were, for him, “schemes of interpretation” as well as predictions about what courts would do.

Ross was particularly critical of the metaphysics of formal legal concepts such as “right,” “obligation,” and “ownership,” which he understood as at best shorthand ways to refer to the conditions under which official (especially judicial) behavior was triggered and at worst forms of ideological obfuscation. He also attacked the (naturalist) view that principles of justice or morality should act as reference points for statements about positive law. Like many others with a background in logical empiricism, Ross regarded statements about the just or the good as expressive of the emotive states of the speaker. These statements could be neither verified nor rationally debated. This did not mean that Ross would have shied away from making such statements. He insisted on the importance of legal policy and of an enlightened democratic public culture. Ross participated actively in Danish constitutional law debates and, in his later years, published articles on political and international questions in Danish newspapers.

Alf Ross received a doctoral degree in law in 1929 from the University of Uppsala for the book Theorie der Rechtsquellen (Theory of Legal Sources). His work Virkelig og gyldighed I Retslaeran (published in English in 1936 as Towards a Realistic Jurisprudence) earned him another doctoral degree in 1934 in Copenhagen, where he became professor of international law four years later. Ross was a prolific writer on many fields of law, including international law and the United Nations. From 1959 to 1972, Ross served as a judge on the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

In his later years, Ross turned to the theory of criminal law, publishing in 1975 a well-received small book titled On Guilt, Responsibility, and Punishment. However, the most widely known of his works—the “opus magnum of Danish jurisprudence” (Waaben 2003: 668)—was On Law and Justice (1958). This was a textbook of realistic jurisprudence that included, in addition to sections on legal sources, method, and “system,” a nuanced analysis and critique of natural law theories and a final section on the nature and tasks of legal policy. It was an elegant and forceful restatement of many of the central tenets of legal realism.

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