Almost a full century separates Alice in Wonderland (1865) of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson(who will be referred by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll) and the second, lengthier and more elaborate edition of Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law (1960; first edition published in 1934). And yet, it is possible to argue that the former anticipates and critically addresses many of the philosophical assumptions that underlie and are elemental to the argument of the latter. Both texts, with the illuminating differences that arise from their disparate genre, have as one of their key themes norms and their functioning. Wonderland, as Alice soon finds out, is a world beset by rules of all kinds: from the etiquette rituals of the mad tea-party to the changing setting for the croquet game to the procedural insanity of the trial with which the novel ends. Pure Theory of Law, as Kelsen emphatically stresses, has...

Almost a full century separates Alice in Wonderland (1865) of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson(who will be referred by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll) and the second, lengthier and more elaborate edition of Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law (1960; first edition published in 1934). And yet, it is possible to argue that the former anticipates and critically addresses many of the philosophical assumptions that underlie and are elemental to the argument of the latter. Both texts, with the illuminating differences that arise from their disparate genre, have as one of their key themes norms and their functioning. Wonderland, as Alice soon finds out, is a world beset by rules of all kinds: from the etiquette rituals of the mad tea-party to the changing setting for the croquet game to the procedural insanity of the trial with which the novel ends. Pure Theory of Law, as Kelsen emphatically stresses, has...

Almost a full century separates Alice in Wonderland (1865) of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson(who will be referred by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll) and the second, lengthier and more elaborate edition of Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law (1960; first edition published in 1934). And yet, it is possible to argue that the former anticipates and critically addresses many of the philosophical assumptions that underlie and are elemental to the argument of the latter. Both texts, with the illuminating differences that arise from their disparate genre, have as one of their key themes norms and their functioning. Wonderland, as Alice soon finds out, is a world beset by rules of all kinds: from the etiquette rituals of the mad tea-party to the changing setting for the croquet game to the procedural insanity of the trial with which the novel ends. Pure Theory of Law, as Kelsen emphatically stresses, has...