For his part, in Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law, law is treated as a scientific structure independent from outside influences such as politics, morality, or social concerns. For Kelsen, therefore, law should be understood and taught as a "pure" system of rules, wherein every rule derives its authority from a higher one in the hierarchy. This framework makes it possible for us to treat law as an independent structure with its own internal logic and organization.

In Kelsen's view, law is a normative system—a system of rules prescribing what people ought to do. Every rule, or *norm*, derives its validity from a higher norm, so that the system has perfect horizontality and clear hierarchy. Take, for example, a local law: its power flows from national legislation, which in turn draws authority from the constitution. This takes one all the way back to the single underlying *Grundnorm* or Basic Norm, discussed in the following chapter.

Kelsen's technique was neo-Kantian philosophy, in that we need to understand law as an orderly system of norms instead of merely describing how people are acting. Neo-Kantianism argued that the law was an orderly structure and that every rule could be fitted into a larger whole. Kelsen felt that through this technique it was possible to see the law in an objective science without being clouded by personal opinion.