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ound the objective validity of the subjective meaning of the acts by which the constitution is created.[4] The norms that are below the basic norm are valid because the basic norm has conferred objective validity on these general norms. Kelsen also hypothesised about the consequence of changing the basic norm in relation to whether the change would be valid.[5] Kelsen described the situation whereby a group of individuals seize power by force and remove the legitimate government to introduce a republican government. Kelsen believed that if the citizens conform to the new order, the new order will be valid. This is because, in Kelsen’s opinion, in order for a norm to be valid it has to be efficacious and the norm must command a sufficiency of adherence or obedience from the majority of citizens to validate it; universal or total obedience is not essential. The X liberation party was duly elected to power by a majority of citizens and the party has the support of the military and the police, thereby satisfying the sufficiency of adherence requirement. The validity and efficacy of the new laws would only be questioned if the majority of the citizens of X did not attach credence to the laws or if they avoided compliance. The legal order that was in place prior to the X liberation party coming to power lost its efficacy and consequently every norm lost its validity because the whole legal order was annulled in a constitutional way.[6]

Kelsen also believes that the validity of the basic norm is presupposed and that ‘coercive acts ought to be carried out only under the conditions and in the way determined by the “fathers” of the constitution’.[7] On this basis, it is clear that the Irish government’s stance is that the basic and general norms enacted by the X liberation party are valid legal norms that should be obeyed by the Irish lawyers. The Irish lawyers may believe that the new statutes are morally reprehensible. However, value judgments and moral or ethical considerations are irrelevant from a Kelsenite perspective. Kelsen completely rejected any connection between law and morals and theorised that all historical, sociological and ideological issues were beyond the scope of his pure theory of law. Kelsen distinguished between law and morals on the grounds that law is a coercive normative order that attempts to bring about a certain type of behaviour by attaching to the opposite behaviour a socially organised coercive act[8] such as the forcible taking away of life, of freedom or of economic or other value, whereas a morality based system comprises of a social order without sanctions where merely approbation of norm-conforming behaviour and disapprobation of norm-opposing behaviour is given. To Kelsen, morals are merely propositions that describe our subjective preferences for behaviour that is impossible to prove objectively; morals are essentially irrational because they merely express different feelings and intuition.[9] Indeed, from a Kelsenite viewpoint any law, even if it was considerably harsher and more morally reprehensible that X’s current laws, is valid if it satisfies the principle of efficacy and can rely on a higher norm for its valid legal existence because, according to Kelsen, ‘there is no kind of human behaviour that, because of its nature, could not be made into a legal duty corresponding to a legal right’.[10] Therefore, as the rule book of the X liberation party is a valid basic norm according to Kelsen