Hugo Krabbe

Hugo Krabbe
Detail from Carl Albert Feldmann's 1937 portrait
Born	(1857-02-03)3 February 1857 Leiden, Netherlands
Died	4 February 1936(1936-02-04) (aged 79) Leiden, Netherlands
Occupation	Professor
Years active	1894–1927
Academic background
Education	Leiden University
Thesis	De burgerlijke staatsdienst in Nederland (1883)
Academic work
Discipline	Public law
Institutions	University of Groningen Leiden University
Notable works	Die Lehre der Rechtssouveränität (1906) De moderne Staatsidee (1915) Kritische Darstellung der Staatslehre (1930)
Notable ideas	Sovereignty of Law Monism in International Law

Hugo Krabbe (3 February 1857 – 4 February 1936) was a Dutch legal philosopher and writer on public law. Known for his contributions to the theory of sovereignty and the state, he is regarded as a precursor of Hans Kelsen. Also Krabbe identified the state with the law and argued that state law and international law are parts of a single normative system, but contrary to Kelsen he conceived the identity between state and law as the outcome of an evolutionary process. Krabbe maintained that the binding force of the law is founded on the "legal consciousness" of mankind: a normative feeling inherent to human psychology. His work is expressive of the progressive and cosmopolitan ideals of interwar internationalism, and his notion of "sovereignty of law" stirred up much controversy in the legal scholarship of the time.