[citation needed] He was married to Camilla Jellinek, née Wertheim (1860–1940), who was persuaded to join the Women's Movement by Marianne Weber in 1900 and became famous there especially for her work with providing women with legal aid and the production of draft reforms of the criminal law.

The couple had six children, born between 1884 and 1896, of which just four survived childhood—among them son Walter, who also became a law professor and edited a final, posthumous edition of General Theory of the State; daughter Dora, who survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp; and youngest son, Otto, who died in 1943 as a result of abuse at the hands of the Gestapo.

Jellinek argued that the French Revolution, which was the focal point of 19th-century political theory, should not be thought of as arising from a purely French tradition (namely the tradition stemming from Jean-Jacques Rousseau) but as a close analogue of revolutionary movements and ideas in England and the United States.

[citation needed] Jellinek studied law in 1867 at the University of Vienna along with art history and philosophy.

Jellinek attended Leipzig in 1872 writing a dissertation on The Worldviews of Leibnitz and Schopenhauer and received his Dr. phil.

In 1891 Jellinek became a professor of law at the Heidelberg University, and in 1900 he wrote his magnum opus, the General Theory of State.