Wikipedia:Peer review/Hugo Krabbe/archive1

Hugo Krabbe


I've listed this article for peer review because I'd like to have some feedback: this is my first article on en.wiki - I have some experience on it.wiki, where I've written a few articles, but I imagine that each project has its own rules and standards. English is not my mother tongue and, apart from that, I think I have much to learn about how things get done here. Based on my experience on it.wiki, Peer review and Featured article review may be good ways for learning quickly and for getting an idea of the community and its guidelines. Plus, I've dedicated quite a bit of work to Krabbe and I would like the result to become, with everyone's help, as good as possible. Finally, in a time of war, I hope that the lesson of people who lived between the two World Wars and worked on international law with a cosmopolitan and pacifist commitment might be, if not inspiring, at least of some interest to my new fellows Wikipedians.

Thanks, Gitz (talk) (contribs) 22:14, 21 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello and thanks for your article. You mention he was in the civil service. Did he do anything notable? How does that impact his later writings? His Doctorate is on the civil service so I would think some more discussion on what he did during that time is warranted. Why was he chosen to be chief commissioner at the Ministry of the Interiors? Why were his reformations to the electoral system opposed? "Die Lehre der Rechtssouveränität ... one of the most controversial works in Dutch legal science" can you source that? What is the controversy over?Czarking0 (talk) 22:39, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much for your inputs. I'll try to answer at the best of my knowledge and sources:
 * As far as I know, Krabbe is not notable as a civil servant. Being a civil servant was just the first step of a career that was essentially academic. I imagine his early experiences had some bearing on his first academic monograph - a book on the civil service in the Netherlands. Moreover, the sources I quote mention his role in drafting a very contentious (and failed) reform of the electoral system. However, I found no further information on his activities as civil servant, and I don't know why he was chosen as chief commissioner at the Ministry of the Interiors.
 * With regard to the political struggles surrounding the reform of the electoral system, my RS say that that reform was very controversial. Why was it controversial? Our article Johannes Tak van Poortvliet provides good insights. I quote: Tak van Poortvliet was an ardent supporter of suffrage extension, an issue which strongly divided the Liberals. After the liberals won the parliamentary election in 1891, he was asked to become Minister of the Interior in the Van Tienhoven cabinet. However, he only wanted to join the cabinet if the question of suffrage extension would become the main priority. As Minister of the Interior, he proposed a bill which would extend the right to vote to the whole adult male population. However, the right, including the "old liberals", were opposed and his bill was rejected by a majority of the House of Representatives in 1894. He dissolved the House, and hoped that new elections would result in a progressive majority. However, the Takkianen (his followers) lost the elections.
 * The sentence Die Lehre der Rechtssouveränität ... one of the most controversial works in Dutch legal science is based on this source by Kranenburg, who says: is wel een der meest bestreden boeken uit onze wetenschap geweest ("has certainly been one of the most contested books in our science"). It was contested because at the time maintaining that the law as such is "sovereign" was quite provocative if not subversive. Intellectuals in Europe had long been debating, since the French Revolution and the Restoration, on whether sovereignty belonged to the King or to the People. Jurists came up with a clever solution: neither the King nor the People is sovereign, as the true sovereign is the Nation (in France) or the State (in Germany and elsewhere). These concepts, Nation and State, at the time were perceived as less polemical than the King or the People: nobody is the Nation/the State, they are abstract notions; the People could cut off the King's head, but the Nation (the State) is "us all". So in a way these formal conceptys promoted pacification and the rule of law (Etat de droit, Rechtsstaat) over absolutism and radical democracy. In the Netherlands apparently they were very happy with that fashionable German idea that the State, and only the State, is sovereign. Then Krabbe came and said something unheard before, very provocative: in a modern state, nobody is sovereign, and only the law can claim to be obeyed. The State is not sovereign at all because any authority is bound by the law, including international law. At the time of the "European civil wars" (WWI and WW2) this idea, "law's sovereignty", was a strong cosmopolitan and liberal provocation, a challenging notion that few were ready to embrace, and among those few there is Hans Kelsen, the most important legal theorist of 20th century. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 00:55, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry I forgot to ping my kind reviewer, @Czarking0. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 06:04, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Gitz6666 your third point is brilliant. You should clean up the language a little bit and add it to the article following the aforementioned sentence. I wonder if it is reasonable to add an additional section to the Article in which you discuss the reaction to his work. What later authors cite Krabbe and what are their criticisms. You have already given passing mention to a few of his contemporaries; however, it may be worthwhile to dedicate a section to how he fits into "the greater narrative" of his time. Czarking0 (talk) 07:02, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * That would be very interesting indeed, thank you, @Czarking0! Two "big names" immediately come to mind: Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt, both of them already mentioned in the article. However, I'm sure Krabbe's work had been discussed elsewhere at the time. I have no reference at hand but I'm confident that in the future, when I will find something interesting on the point you raise, I will come back to this article and add more information about scholarly discussions on Krabbe among his contemporaries. With regard to adding my few comments above on the point of sovereigny of law vs sovereignty of State/Nation vs sovereignty of King/People, I'm afaid it would be difficult to do that without falling within WP:RO WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. I have references on these notions - they are not my personal original research - but none of the specifically mentions Hugo Krabbe, as they deal with Kelsen and other authors. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 07:22, 8 June 2022 (UTC); edited 22:25, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Gitz6666 thank you for your care in avoiding WP:SYNTH. I think we can find a middle ground that allows some context on why Kranenburg thinks the work is controversial while staying within the bounds of citation. As a side note, I do not understand the connection to WP:RO. I do not think all the references need to mention Krabbe specifically if their purpose is to provide the reader context for time in which Krabbe is writing. However, if there is some wiki polciy on biographies only using sources that mention the author then I am wrong. Specifically, I think you should have a source, or two, for the following sentences and include them in the article "Intellectuals in Europe had long been debating, since the French Revolution and the Restoration, on whether sovereignty belonged to the King or to the People. Jurists came up with a clever solution: neither the King nor the People is sovereign, as the true sovereign is the Nation (in France) or the State (in Germany and elsewhere). These concepts, Nation and State, at the time were perceived as less polemical than the King or the People: nobody is the Nation/the State, they are abstract notions; the People could cut off the King's head, but the Nation (the State) is 'us all'. So in a way these formal conceptys promoted pacification and the rule of law (Etat de droit, Rechtsstaat) over absolutism and radical democracy. In the Netherlands apparently they were very happy with that fashionable German idea that the State, and only the State, is sovereign."
 * Then Krabbe came and said something provocative: in a modern state, nobody is sovereign, and only the law can claim to be obeyed. Czarking0 (talk) 15:03, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that, @Czarking0. We could add that text with the following sources (by the way, I'm not the author of any of them, but I know that all of them are very authoritative and reliable):
 * You said a source, or two, while these are four, but the point is very general and broad and covers different countries - France, Germany and also Italy - so maybe adding four references wouldn't mean that we are incurring in WP:OVERKILL - or do you think otherwise?
 * By the way, sorry for my mistake: I meant WP:OR, not WP:RO. I've edited my comment above. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 22:33, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I think four sources are warranted here since we are making a broad claim. I'm not personally going to edit the text since I do not speak the source languages. Czarking0 (talk) 23:03, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I'm finding it a bit difficult to identify the place in the text where these contents could be placed without interrupting the narrative and resulting in a digression. I'll deal with this later and probably will rephrase and shorten the text, and/or divide the section "Doctrine" in subsections. I would also like to add some contents on Krabbe's reading of Thomas More, Grotius and Rousseau, following Stella as reliable secondary source and Krabbe's "The Modern State" as primary source. A single sentence should suffice. As I'm relatively a newbie, I don't know how is best to do this: shall I directly edit the article or is it best if I first publish a draft here and seek consensus? Gitz (talk) (contribs) 08:07, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Czarking0, I added the text (with numerous substantial changes) in a sandbox, here; the new parts are highlighted in yellow. However, the more I read it, the more I think that it doesn't improve the quality of the article. It very much looks to me, if not a piece of original research (it's all relatively basic stuff in modern legal history), nonetheless too peripheral to the subject and digressive. So before adding it to the article I'd rather wait for a second opinion, if you don't mind. Maybe I'm too (self)critical, or maybe not... Gitz (talk) (contribs) 20:40, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The lead section is a little short consult this guide Manual of Style/Lead sectionCzarking0 (talk) 07:14, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Gitz6666 we need a dutch speaker to verify some of the sources. I am not familiar with how to request that. Czarking0 (talk) 07:19, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Expanding the lead section is most definitely a good idea. Re Dutch speaker, I honestly don't know. I speak a bit of German, and for writing this article I basically used Google translator and a bit of common sense. I'll leave a message at Project:Netherlands, and see if anybody answers the call. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 22:40, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Czarking0, re template:By whom in the lead section. The source is Stella 2016, p. 65. Here's a quotation:
 * 2.2. Precursors of the Pure Theory of Law: Hugo Krabbe (by Giuliana Stella) Hugo Krabbe (1857–1936) gained widespread recognition and a devout following in his day, this owing to his innovative approach and to the originality of his works, which fit squarely into the broad contemporary landscape of German-language jurisprudence, but which pay equal attention to, and draw inspiration from, the thinkers who were paving the way for the great epistemological turn of the late 19th century: It is this new paradigm that would eventuate in the so-called Pure theory of law developed by Kelsen, a thinker that Krabbe is in fact considered to have anticipated.
 * So I think that the sentence in the lead section "Notable for his theory of the sovereignty of the law, he is often regarded as a precursor of Hans Kelsen" is supported by WP:RS: Stella is not just saying that she thinks Krabbe is a precursor of Kelsen, but rather that "he is in fact considered to have anticipated" Kelsen. So maybe we could drop the "often" or modify the sentence in some way, but the content is overall well-sourced. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 00:24, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Agreed and edited to your recommendation. Czarking0 (talk) 01:50, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Re expanding the lead. What about the following draft?
 * "Hugo Krabbe (3 February 1857 - 4 February 1936) was an influential Dutch public lawyer and legal philosopher. Notable for his contributions to the theory of sovereignty and the state, he is regarded as a precursor of Hans Kelsen. Like Kelsen, Krabbe identified state and law, and argued that state law and international law were parts of a single normative system; contrary to Kelsen, he conceived of 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 liberal internationalism, and his notion of "sovereignty of the law" stirred up much controversy in the legal scholarship of the time."
 * Perhaps we could move the reference to Stella from the lead to somewhere else in the body of the article. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 01:25, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes this is better. Czarking0 (talk) 01:51, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
 * "Hugo Krabbe (3 February 1857 - 4 February 1936) was an influential Dutch public lawyer and legal philosopher. Notable for his contributions to the theory of sovereignty and the state, he is regarded as a precursor of Hans Kelsen. Like Kelsen, Krabbe identified state and law, and argued that state law and international law were parts of a single normative system; contrary to Kelsen, he conceived of 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 liberal internationalism, and his notion of "sovereignty of the law" stirred up much controversy in the legal scholarship of the time."
 * Perhaps we could move the reference to Stella from the lead to somewhere else in the body of the article. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 01:25, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes this is better. Czarking0 (talk) 01:51, 9 June 2022 (UTC)