Abstract After the Anschluss and the Nazis’ seizure of power in Austria, hundreds of Austrian lawyers emigrated to the United States. Due to the different legal system and the language barrier, only a few succeeded in pursuing a career in law; the number of those who managed to obtain a permanent (teaching) position at US law schools was even smaller. For those Austrian legal scholars who did succeed, the teaching of (comparative) jurisprudence became a door opener to the American academic community. This raises the question whether the presence of Austrian legal scholars at US law schools led to the spread of “Austrian” legal theories, such as Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law, in the United States after 1939. The article attempts to discuss this question by focusing on three selected Austrian legal scholars who had all been educated at Austrian universities prior to World War II and succeeded in obtaining tenured positions at US law schools after their emigration.
Miriam Gassner (2026) studied this question.