Born in Prague on October 11, 1881, Hans Kelsen grew up in Vienna. He studied law at the University of Vienna and completed, in 1911, the Habilitation (major dissertation required for the venia legendi or state license to hold university lectures). After military service in World War I, he worked up a number of drafts of what became the Austrian Federal Constitution of October 1920. Here Kelsen's most distinctive contribution was centralized constitutional review, an entirely new institutional practice. During the 1920s, Kelsen served as professor of law at the University of Vienna and also as Constitutional Court judge. Ousted from the latter position in 1930 by Austria's right-of-center Christian-Social Party, Kelsen took up a professorship in Cologne. Ousted from this position in the spring of 1933, on the basis of the notorious Nazi statute for the "Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" (authorizing the dismissal of those seen as...