Carl Schmitt S Early Legal Theoretical Writings

Makes available in English Carl Schmitt's early legal-theoretical writings, the intellectual background of Schmitt's political and constitutional theory.

"Carl Schmitt and the Problem of the Realization of Law 1. The famous pithy aphorisms that Carl Schmitt used to open his major works - 'the sovereign is he who decides on the exception', 'the concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political', etc. - have become a part of the common discourse of contemporary scholarship on politics and the law. The theoretical framework that animates these slogans, however, has remained somewhat opaque. It has often been argued that there is no such framework, that Schmitt was a situational thinker whose works are best understood as interventions in concrete political debates that do not add up to a grand theoretical vision"--

It is a commonplace of Schmitt scholarship that the controversial thinker sought to recapture some of the elan of the pre-Weimar state through his advocacy of effectively almost unlimited presidential government. Seitzer demonstrates how Schmitt believed comparative history itself could reinvigorate the ailing German state by subtly altering prevailing understandings of the relation of theory and practice in law and politics. Treating Schmitt's Constitutional Theory and Guardian of the Constitution as methodologically sophisticated comparative histories, Seitzer turns Schmitt's argument against itself. He shows how Schmitt's comparative histories, when properly executed, support a decentralized solution to the Republic's difficulties directly contrary to Schmitt's in terms of its purpose and effect. Problem-oriented, comparative-historical studies of key features of the Weimar system suggest that the dispersion of political power facilitates an institutional dialogue over constitutional principle and practice that better provides for political stability and democratic experimentation. These studies also suggest that linking forms of justification with institutions establishes a productive tension among norms and institutions that is essential to maintaining the viability of constitutional democracy, both in the short- and long-term. This work will be of considerable value to Schmitt scholars and those interested in German legal and political theory as well as those concerned with broad issues in comparative law and European history and political theory.

This is the first full-length study in English of twentieth-century Germany's most influential authoritarian right-wing political theorist, Carl Schmitt, that focuses on the central place of his attack on the liberal rule of law. This is also the first book in any language to devote substantial attention to Schmitt's subterranean influence on some of the most important voices in political thought (Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich A. Hayek, and Hans Morgenthau) in the United States after 1945. Visit our website for sample chapters!

The Legal Theory of Carl Schmitt provides a detailed analysis of Schmitt’s institutional theory of law, mainly developed in the books published between the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s. By reading Schmitt’s overall work through the lens of his institutional turn, the authors offer a strikingly different interpretation of Schmitt’s theory of politics, law and the relation between these two domains. The book argues that Schmitt’s adhesion to legal institutionalism was a key theoretical achievement, based on serious reconsideration of the main flaws of his own decisionist paradigm, in the light of the French and Italian institutional theories of law. In so doing, the authors elucidate how Schmitt was able to unravel many of the impasses that affected his previous conceptual framework. The authors also make comparisons between Schmitt and other leading legal theorists (H. Kelsen, M. Hauriou, S. Romano and C. Mortati) and explain why the current legal debate should take into serious account his legacy.

There continues to be a remarkable revival in academic interest in Carl Schmitt's thought within politics and social theory but this is the first book to address his thought from an explicitly legal theoretical perspective. Transcending the prevailing one-sided and purely historical focus on Schmitt’s significance for debates that took place in the Weimar Republic 1919-1933, this book addresses the actual and potential significance of Schmitt's thought for controversies within contemporary Anglo-American legal theory that have emerged during the past three decades. These include: the critique of liberal forms of legal positivism; the relative ‘indeterminacy’ of legal doctrine and the need for an explicitly interpretative approach to its range of meanings, their scope and policy rationale; the centrality of discretion and judicial law-making within the legal process; the important role played by ideological prejudices and assumptions in legal reasoning; the reinterpretation of law as a form of strategically disguised politics; the legal theoretical critique of universalistic approaches to "human" rights and associated liberal-cosmopolitan 'ideologies of humanity,' including the rhetoric of 'humanitarian intervention'; and the limitations of liberal constitutionalism and liberalism more generally as an approach to law. In Carl Schmitt: Law as Politics, Ideology and Strategic Myth, the author provides an overview and assessment of Schmitt's thought, as well as a consideration of its relevance for contemporary legal thought and debates.

In 1922, Carl Schmitt penned Political Theology, the celebrated essay in which he elaborated on the notorious theory that the heart of politics lies in the sovereign power to issue emergency measures that suspend the legal order. Ever since, Schmitt's thinking has largely been identified with this concept, despite him renouncing it over time. Offering a comprehensive analysis of Schmitt's writings, Carl Schmitt's Institutional Theory provides an ambitious, novel perspective on Carl Schmitt and his legal and political thinking. By delving into Schmitt's output over his decades-long career, Mariano Croce and Andrea Salvatore explore Schmitt's varied and developing thoughts on exceptionalism, societal pluralism and the law as the progenitor and enforcer of normality. Challenging dominant interpretations, Croce and Salvatore dethrone the false centrality of certain key texts, and instead provide a more unified, coherent account of his institutional theory from across his long and controversial career.

Articles previously published in the Canadian journal of law and jurisprudence.