Alfred Verdross

Alfred Verdross or Verdroẞ or Verdroẞ-Droßberg (until 1919, Edler von Droßberg; 22 February 1890 – 24 April 1980) was an Austrian international lawyer and judge at the European Court of Human Rights.

Alfred Verdross
Aldred Verdross in 1927
Born(1890-02-22)22 February 1890
Innsbruck
Died27 April 1980(1980-04-27) (aged 90)
Innsbruck
OccupationProfessor
Years active1924–1961
Board member of
Academic background
EducationUniversity of Vienna
Academic work
DisciplineInternational law, Philosophy of Law
InstitutionsUniversity of Vienna
Notable works
  • Die Einheit des rechtlichen Weltbildes auf Grundlage der Völkerrechtsverfassung (1923)
  • Die Verfassung der Völkerrechtsgemeischaft (1926)
  • Völkerrecht (1937)
  • Abendländische Rechtsphilosophie. Ihre Grundlagen und Hauptprobleme in geschichtlicher Schau (1958)
  • (with Bruno Simma) Universelles Völkerrechts. Theorie und Praxis (1976)
Notable ideas

After having served as Austrian foreign ministry official, he became professor of public international law, private international law and philosophy of law at the University of Vienna. Early sympathizer with national-socialism, he never joined the Nazi party. Following the German occupation of Austria, he was suspended from his teaching assignments, but from mid-1939 onwards he was allowed to resume the teaching of international law. After the end of World War II he continued the academic career in Vienna and became, among other things, member of the International Law Commission, member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, president of the Institut de droit International and, from 1959 to 1977, judge at the European Court of Human Rights.

Together with Hans Kelsen and Adolf Merkl, he was one the main exponents of the Vienna school of legal theory. He was an early proponent and chief theorist of the ius cogens doctrine and of the monist theory of the relationship between international and national law, and is considered one of the most influential international lawyer of the 20th century.

Life

Early years

Alfred Verdross was born on 22 February 1890 in Innsbruck as the son of the then lieutenant and later general of the Austro-Hungarian army, Ignaz Verdroß von Droßberg.[1][2][3] He attended the school in Rovereto and Brixen and then studied law at the universities of Vienna, Munich (with Franz Brentano) and Lausanne. In 1913 he was awarded the doctorate at the University of Vienna. As a student in Vienna he met Hans Kelsen, whose private seminars he attended during the World War I.[4][3][5]

In 1916, he passed the judges' examination and subsequently entered the military service as first lieutenant auditor at the Supreme Military Court in Vienna.[4] Before the end of the war, on 15 January 1918 Verdross left the military service and was assigned to the legal services of the Imperial and Royal Foreign Ministry.[6] After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy he became secretary of the Austrian Legation in Berlin. Together with Max Weber and others, he was among the experts who in December 1918 contributed to the parliamentary debates leading up to the drafting of the Weimar Constitution[7] and in 1919 an essay of his succeeded in persuading the parliamentary Constitutional commission to redraft the constitutional provision on international law.[8] In December 1920 he returned to Vienna, where he was employed in the International Law Department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs until 1924, and from 1923 also as a professor at the Consular Academy.[9][1] He habilitated at the University of Vienna in 1921 and in 1924 was appointed associate professor (außerordentlicher Professor) of philosophy of law and in 1925 full professor of public international law, private international law and philosophy of law.[10] He served as a member of the Vienna Law Faculty until his retirement in 1961.[1]

In 1927, Verdross gave his first Hague Lectures, followed by his general course in 1929 and two monographic courses in 1931 and 1935.[11] In 1926–1929, he was appointed substitute member of the Austrian Constitutional Court, in 1928, he was elected as Associate of the Institut de Droit International, and in 1931–1933 as Dean of the Vienna Faculty of Law.[9][10] When the democratic constitution was suspenden in 1933, he refused to serve as Minister of Justice in the Dollfuss government, although he was personally not hostile to the values of Austrofascism. Together with the law school deans of Graz and Innsbruck, he even lodged a formal protest against the breach of the constitution by the new authoritarian government.[12][13][14][15] He agreed to join the Fatherland Front only on the condition that he would not renounce "the ultimate goal of the unification of all Germans", i.e., his pan-Germanist ideals.[15] In 1935 he was appointed as an extraordinary member of the Federal Supreme Court[12] and in 1937 he was elected as Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.[10] In the same year, he founded the Austrian branch of the London-based anti-war organisation "The New Commonwealth", which advocated for the establishment of a world court to adjudicate international disputes and an international police force to enforce its decisions.[16]

Relationship with National Socialism

The role of Verdross in the age of National Socialism is controversial in scholarly literature.[17][18]

He was a Catholic conservative whose political views during the interwar years have been described as attachment to the values of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and hostility to the people's right of self-determination,[13] hope for a "Christian-occidental Europe" in the tradition of the Holy Roman Empire,[19] and endorsment of pan-Germanist nationalism under the influence of Othmar Spann's communitarianism and Austrofascism.[20][21]

Verdross never joined the NSDAP, but was an early sympathizer with National Socialism and was active in DNSAP circles even after the party was outlawed in 1933.[1] He openly declared his nationalist and Catholic views, and was popular among German nationalist and national socialist students.[1] He often intervened on their behalf[1] but on one occasion he also protected Jewish and democratic students from a Nazi attack at the university.[13] In 1933–1934 his assistant at the Consular Academy was Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte, at the time already an SA member and later Nazi Germany war hero, whom he had reccomeneded to Kelsen in Cologne.[22] Verdross showed no qualms about contact with National Socialism even before the Anschluss in 1938. In his successful 1937 textbook on international law, he attempted to bring Nazism and Catholic-inspired universalism closer together:[23] the book calls Mussolini a defender of Christian values, characterises the National Socialist doctrine of international law as "anti-imperalist and federalist",[24] and contains significant traces of a völkisch approach to legal studies and international politics.[25][18][21]

After the annexation of Austria to the German Reich he was temporarily suspended from his teaching assignments in the summer of 1938, but accommodated to political pressure[26] and, from 1939, thanks to the support of the Nazi rector of the university, the legal historian Ernst Schönbauer, and the intervention of General Jodl, he was allowed to resume the teaching of international law, after adapting the content of his lectures to the demands of the new rulers.[27][28] However, he was not allowed to resume the teaching of philosophy of law, since his natural law theory based on Christian values was probably deemed incompatible with the ideology of the regime.[29][25] He managed to come to terms with the Nazi-government[1] and in 1942 was appointed alternate judge at the German Prize Court of Appeals (Oberprisenhof)[10][29] and director of the Institute of Legal Sciences at the university of Vienna.[30]

Post-war

After the end of World War II, Verdross continued his career without undergoing the denazification process.[1]

In 1945 he regained his academic position, in 1947 was nominated full professor and became Dean of the Faculty of Law in 1946–1947 and again in 1958–1959, and Rector of the University of Vienna in 1951–1952. In 1950 was elected a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and of the Institut de Droit International[10] (from 1977, honorary member[1]). In 1956 he was appointed by the United Nations General Assembly as the first Austrian member of the International Law Commission – a body of experts mainly concerned with the codification of international law – where he served from 1957 to 1966.[31][30] From 1958 to 1977 he also served as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration of The Hague and from 1959 to 1961 as president of the Institut de droit international.[31] In 1957 he declined a nomination as a joint candidate for the Federal Presidency of the Austrian People's Party and the Austrian Freedom Party against the later victorious Adolf Schärf.[30]

In 1959 Verdross became a judge of the newly created European Court of Human Rights, where he sat for two terms until 1977.[32][30][33] In 1961 he was President of the Vienna Conference on Diplomatic Relations.[34] Until 1977 he was also a member of the Curatorium of the Hague Academy of International Law, where he taught no less than five courses.[34] His textbook Völkerrecht ("International law"), which first appeared in 1937, soon became the leading treatise on international law in the German language, translated both in Spanish and Russian.[31][34][35] Verdross came to be regarded as one of the most authoritative international lawyers of the 20th century,[36][31][37][38] not least because of the resurgence of natural law theory in post-war Austria and Germany, a revival of which Verdross became one of the most celebrated protagonists.[39]

He died on 27 April 1980 in Innsbruck, the city where he was bom.[40]

Doctrine

Alongside Adolf Merkl, Verdross was one of Hans Kelsen's most important pupils and a leading exponent of the Vienna school of legal theory.[6][41][42] Many of his contributions to the study of international law are based on Kelsen's theory of law and the state, which Verdress largely embraced, including the idea of the unity of law, the hierarchical structure of the legal system (so-called Stufenbau) and the concept of basic norm (Grundnorm).[43][44][45][46]

Thus, as early as 1921, Verdross followed Kelsen's lead and abandoned his initial "monism with primacy of state law", according to which international and national law constitute a single legal system in which national law enjoys supremacy. He also rejected the prevailing theory of the time, Triepel's "dualism", according to which international and national law constitute two separate legal systems, based on different grounds of validity and addressed to different subjects. Instead, in line with the revival of the universalist approach to international law initiated by the Dutch scholar Hugo Krabbe and continued by Kelsen,[47][48] Verdross subscribed to "monism with primacy of international law", a position he already expounded in his 1923 book Die Einheit des rechtlichen Weltbildes ("The Unity of the Legal World-View").[9][49][50][46] From that universalist perspective, international and national law are parts of a single, unitary legal system, largely effective and endowed with the power of coercion; within that common frame, international law prevails over national law and determines the scope of legitimate state action. In line with Kelsen, also Verdross admitted that in case of conflict between international law and national law the latter is not per se null and void, but remains valid until it is formally repealed or amended to make it compatible with international law: national law retains a temporary, provisional, validity (so-called "moderate monism").[44][51]

These conclusions were largely based on the rejection, shared by Verdross and Kelsen, of the dogma of absolute state sovereignty and voluntarist legal positivism: sovereignty is no longer the "supreme power" but only a competence conferred on the state directly by international law;[52] international law is not founded on the consent of states and therefore states can in principle be bound by rules to which they have not agreed. In Verdross' work, the "fight against voluntarist legal positivism" was the premise for further doctrinal developments, including the possibility of recognising as sources of international law, alongside the law of treaties and customary law, also the "general principles of law recognized by civilised nations".[53][31][54] In a 1931 contribution to the Festschrift für Hans Kelsen zum 50. Geburtstag, Verdross explained that these principles originate from the legal consciousness of all modern civilised nations and are binding also upon states which have not consented to them. In a 1937 essay on "Forbidden Treaties" he argued that these principles forbid the conclusion of treaties contra bonos mores, that is, offensive to the conscience and sense of justice. In so doing, he became the chief theorist of the ius cogens doctrine that prevails today and that found its final breakthrough in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: he contended that all rules of general international law created for humanitarian purposes qualify as ius cogens, and that neither international treaties nor customary international law can override these general principles upon which the international legal order is built.[55][56][57][58] Verdross's work also had a strong influence on later theorization about the "constitutionalisation of international law".[59]

Verdross also distanced himself from essential parts of Kelsen's theory.[60] As early as 1923, he rejected Kelsen's moral relativism, turned away from of his mentor's neo-Kantianism and legal positivism, and fully embraced objective idealism and the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of natural law.[61][6][62] The School of Salamanca in particular is said to be "so influential on Verdross that he virtually adopted it as the Leitmotiv of his entire international legal thinking".[63] Thus, he dismissed the Kelsenian notion that the basic norm is merely hypothetical and formal, such as to underpin the validity of any legal system, irrespective of the content of its norms, and instead postulated a substantive content for the foundation of the legal system: Verdross's basic norm is neither hypothetical nor formal, it is rooted in the objective realm of values and is both positive-legal and ethical in nature.[12][44] In filling the Kelsenian basic norm with determinate normative content, namely that of the fundamental principles of law, Verdross relied on the notion of a shared legal consciousness (Rechtsbewuẞtsein) of the peoples of the world, which he regarded as anchored in natural law, and on the idea that the social nature of human communities gives rise to objective moral and legal values, such as the preservation of human liberty, dignity and basic standards of inviolability.[64][65] According to Martti Koskenniemi, in so doing "Verdross used the pure theory so as to turn what Kelsen saw as political choice into an article of faith in fundamental values. This was the language of Austrian Catholicism that did little to prevent the country’s descent into Nazism".[59]

From the mid-1930s onwards, the gulf between Kelsen and his former pupil Verdross widened, as the latter took up some of the ethno-nationalist themes then in vogue and began to argue that the Volkstum constitutes "the highest natural form of humanity" and that "every person can attain the development of his natural talents only within the Volksgemeinschaft", thus moving away from Kelsen's and his school's rejection of nationalism.[66]

Awards
Memorial plaque for Alfred Verdross, University of Vienna, Alser Straße 4

Publications (selected)

Books
  • Die Einheit des rechtlichen Weltbildes auf Grundlage der Völkerrechtsverfassung (Tübingen, Mohr 1923)
  • Die Verfassung der Völkerrechtsgemeischaft (Wien, Springer 1926)
  • Völkerrecht (Berlin, Springer, 1937 read online; 5th ed. 1964, with Stephan Verosta and Karl Zemanek)
  • Die immerwährende Neutralität der Republik Österreich (Wien, Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1958; 3rd ed. 1967)
  • Abendländische Rechtsphilosophie. Ihre Grundlagen und Hauptprobleme in geschichtlicher Schau (Wien, Springer, 1958; 2nd ed. 1963)
  • Die Quellen des Universellen Völkerrechts. Eine Einführung (Freiburg, Rombach, 1973)
  • (with Bruno Simma) Universelles Völkerrechts. Theorie und Praxis (Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1976; 3rd ed. 1984)
  • Österreichs immerwährende Neutralität (Wien, Verlag f. Politik u. Geschichte, 1978; also in English and French).
  • Alfred Verdross: Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Franz Köck and Herbert Schambeck (Wien, Verlag Österreich, 2019) ISBN 978-3-7046-8267-3

Courses
  • "Le fondement du droit international" (1927-I) 16 Recueil des cours de l'Académie de droit international, pp. 247–323. read online
  • "Règles générales du droit international de la paix" (1929-V) 30 Recueil des cours de l'Académie de droit international, pp. 271–518. read online
  • "Les règles internationales concernant le traitement des étrangers" (1931-III) 37 Recueil des cours de l'Académie de droit international, pp. 323–412. read online
  • "Les principes généraux du droit dans la jurisprudence internationale" (1935-II) 52 Recueil des cours de l'Académie de droit international, pp. 191–251. read online

Essays
  • "Das Problem des freien Ermessens und die Freirechtsbewegung", Österreichische Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht, 1. Jahrgang, Wien 1914, pp. 616–644. read online
  • "L'excès de pouvoir du juge arbitral dans le droit international public", Revue de droit international et de législation comparée, 1928, pp. 225–242. read online
  • "Les principes généraux du droit et le droit des gens", Revue de droit international, 1934, pp. 484. read online
  • "L'idée du droit des gens dans la philosophie de Platon à Hegel", Mélanges offerts à Ernest Mahaim, vol. II, 1935, p. 383.
  • "Forbidden Treaties in International Law", American Journal of International Law, 1937, pp. 571–577. read online
  • "General International Law and The United Nations Charter", International Affairs, 1954, pp. 342–348. read online
  • "Jus Dispositivum and Jus Cogens in International Law", American Journal of International Law, 1966, pp. 55–63. read online
  • "Le principe de la non intervention dans les affaires relevant de la compétence nationale d'un Etat et l'article 2 (7) de la Charte des Nations Unies", in La Communauté internationale. Mélanges offerts à Charles Rousseau, Paris, Pedone, 1974, pp. 267–276. read online
  • "La dignité de la personne humaine comme base des droits de l’homme", Österreichische Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht, 1980, vol. 31, pp. 271–277.

Festschriften
  • F. A. von der Heydte et al. (eds.), Völkerrecht und rechtliches Weltbild. Festschrift für Alfred Verdross (Vienna: Springer, 1960).
  • R. Marcic et al. (eds.), Internationale Festschrift für Alfred Verdross zum 80. Geburtstag (München-Salzburg: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1971)
  • H. Miehsler et al. (eds.), Ius Humanitatis. Festschrift zum 90. Geburtstag von Alfred Verdross (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1980) ISBN 978-3-428-04593-8.

See also

Notes and references

Notes
  1. Kniefacz & Mühlberger 2014.
  2. Simma 1975, pp. 134–5.
  3. Staudigl-Ciechowicz & Olechowski 2014, p. 533.
  4. Simma 2018, p. 417.
  5. Fillafer & Feichtinger 2019, p. 427.
  6. Staudigl-Ciechowicz & Olechowski 2014, p. 534.
  7. Stolleis 2004, p. 56.
  8. Simma 1995b, pp. 41–42.
  9. Staudigl-Ciechowicz & Olechowski 2014, p. 535.
  10. Simma 1995a, p. 103.
  11. Bernstorff 2010, p. 282.
  12. Staudigl-Ciechowicz & Olechowski 2014, p. 536.
  13. Seidl-Hohenveldern 1995, p. 99.
  14. Fillafer & Feichtinger 2019, p. 429.
  15. Busch 2012, p. 152.
  16. Busch 2012, p. 153.
  17. Busch 2012, p. 139.
  18. Staudigl-Ciechowicz & Olechowski 2014, p. 537.
  19. Busch 2012, p. 144.
  20. Carty 1995.
  21. Simma 1995b, p. 36.
  22. Busch 2012, pp. 141–142.
  23. Amorosa 2022, p. 418.
  24. Verdross 1937, pp. 28–29: "as the guardian of the Roman tradition, [Italian foreign policy] defends Christian occidental values and the order that sustains them ... since it recognises the individual development of all peoples and rejects the amalgamation of foreign nations, the National Socialist doctrine of international law is anti-imperalist and federalist and therefore fundamentally different from the nationalism of the pre-war period".
  25. Bernstorff 2010, p. 283.
  26. Carty 1995, p. 78.
  27. Stolleis 2004, p. 305.
  28. Busch 2012, pp. 159, 163.
  29. Seidl-Hohenveldern 1995, p. 100.
  30. Busch 2012, p. 162.
  31. Lingens 2001, p. 649.
  32. "Judges of the Court since 1959 / Les juges de la cour depuis 1959" (PDF). European Court of Human Rights. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
  33. Amorosa 2022, pp. 420–421.
  34. Simma 1975, p. 135.
  35. Stolleis 2004, 429: "the most important textbook on international law at the time".
  36. Simma 1995b, p. 54.
  37. Fillafer & Feichtinger 2019, p. 448.
  38. Koeck 2020, p. 70.
  39. Fillafer & Feichtinger 2019, p. 447–447.
  40. Simma 1995a, p. 104.
  41. Busch 2012, p. 140.
  42. Simma 1975, pp. 134–135.
  43. Bernstorff 2010, p. 4.
  44. Gragl 2018, p. 26.
  45. Navari 2021, p. 111.
  46. Navari 2021, p. 112.
  47. Koeck 2020, p. 66.
  48. Simma 1995b, p. 44.
  49. Bernstorff 2010, ch. 3.
  50. Gragl 2018, pp. 7–8, 25–26.
  51. Simma 1995b, pp. 38, 45–46.
  52. Mannoni 1999, p. 267, who is quoting from Verdross 1928, p. 314.
  53. Simma 1995b, pp. 47–50.
  54. Busch 2012, p. 154.
  55. Staudigl-Ciechowicz & Olechowski 2014, pp. 536–537.
  56. Fillafer & Feichtinger 2019, p. 435.
  57. Sinclair 1970, pp. 66.
  58. Simma 1995b, pp. 50–53.
  59. Koskenniemi 2011, p. 57.
  60. Fillafer & Feichtinger 2019, pp. 429–438.
  61. Stolleis 2004, pp. 151–152.
  62. Simma 1995b, p. 39.
  63. Simma 1995b, p. 49.
  64. Fillafer & Feichtinger 2019, p. 436.
  65. Bernstorff 2010, pp. 59–60.
  66. Fillafer & Feichtinger 2019, p. 447.
  67. Simma 1975, p. 134.
  68. "AMERICAN SOCIETY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. Regulation on the Honors Committee" (PDF). American Society of International Law. Retrieved 10 May 2022.
  69. "ONORIFICENZE" (PDF). Acta Apostolicae Sedis. 51: 285.
  70. "Senat S 227.4 Verdross, Alfred, Verleihung des Titels Ehrensenator der Universität Wien, 1959.08.14 - 1966.06.02 (Akt)". scopeq.cc.univie.ac.at. Retrieved 9 May 2023.
  71. "Preis der Stadt Wien". www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at. Retrieved 16 May 2023.
  72. "Nomination archive: Alfred Verdross". NobelPrize.org. 1 April 2020. Retrieved 16 May 2023.
  73. "Nomination archive: Alfred Verdroß-Drossberg". NobelPrize.org. 1 April 2020. Retrieved 16 May 2023.
  74. "Verdross, Alfred von nell'Enciclopedia Treccani". www.treccani.it (in Italian). Retrieved 10 May 2023.
  75. "Preisträger des Großen Preises und der Würdigungspreise des Kardinal-Innitzer-Studienfonds ab 1971". Kardinal Innitzer Studienfonds.
  76. "Premi Feltrinelli 1950–2011 | Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei". www.lincei.it (in Italian). Retrieved 10 May 2023.
  77. "Real Decreto 1441/1977, de 23 de junio, por el que se concede la Gran Cruz de la Orden Civil de Alfonso X el Sabio a los señores que se relacionan" (PDF). Boletín Oficial del Estado (150): 14215. 24 June 1977. ISSN 0212-033X.
  78. Posch, Herbert (1998). Tore der Erinnerung am Campus der Universität Wien. 650 plus – Geschichte der Universität Wien. University of Vienna. Retrieved 10 May 2023.

References

Further reading
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.