Alf Niels Christian Ross

Alf Niels Christian Ross (10 June 1899 – 17 August 1979) was a Danish jurist, legal philosopher, and judge of the European Court of Human Rights (1959–1971). He is best known as one of the leading figures of Scandinavian legal realism. His debate in 1959 with the prominent British legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart – which began in the Cambridge Law Journal (Vol. 17) – was important in framing the modern conflict between legal positivism and legal realism. Ross was born in Copenhagen as a son of civil servant Frederik Ross and graduated from high school in 1917. Ross studied law at the University of Copenhagen graduating in 1922. He consequently worked in a barrister's office. In 1923, he commenced a study tour, which would last for two and a half years, visiting France, England and Austria, where he met and befriended fellow legal scholar, Hans Kelsen. He spent 1928–1929 at the Uppsala University, receiving a doctoral degree in philosophy in 1929 under the supervision of Axel Hägerström. In 1935, he was appointed to teach constitutional law at the University of Copenhagen. In 1953, Ross published his most famous book Om Ret og Retfærdighed (which he would later publish in English, under the title On Law and Justice). In this book, he states that there is no a priori validity to give the law some special position. Experience serves as a guideline. His determination not to rely on anything but the facts leads to statements as the following: “The legal rule is neither true nor false; it is a directive.” Furthermore, the norm is directed at judges rather than citizens. In this line of thought, he opposes natural law-approaches. He was married to Else-Merete Ross, a Danish Social Liberal Party politician and Member of the Folketing from 1960 to 1973.