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The Concept of the Political: A Key to Understanding Carl Schmitt's Constitutional Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2015

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde
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The focus of this paper is not on the person, but on the work of Carl Schmitt, in particular the significance of Schmitt's concept of the political for an understanding of his legal and constitutional theory. Let me start with a short personal memory. When I was a third year law student, I read Carl Schmitt's Constitutional Theory. I came across the formulations that the state is the political unity of a people and that the rule of law component in a constitution is an unpolitical component. I was puzzled by these two remarks. I had learned from Georg Jellinek that the state, from a sociological perspective, is a purposeful corporative unit and, from a legal perspective, represents a territorially based corporation. I had also gathered some knowledge about “organic” state theories, especially that of Otto von Gierke who considers the state an organism and a real corporative personality rather than a mere legal fiction. On the basis of these theories, I felt unable to understand Schmitt's point that the state is the political unity of a people, because in those theories the political aspect is largely missing. It was only later that, by reading and studying Carl Schmitt's essay The Concept of the Political, I gradually learned to make sense of the above remarks. Thus I have discovered that that essay, and the understanding of the political elaborated in it, contains the key to understanding Carl Schmitt's constitutional theory in general. I would now like to explain this.

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Research Article
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Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 10 , Issue 1: CARL SCHMITT , January 1997 , pp. 5 - 19
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Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 1997

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References

This is reprinted from E.-W. Böckenförde, Recht, Staat, und Freiheit: Studien zur Rechtsphilosophie, Staatstheorie und Verfassungsgeschichte (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991), by permission of the author and Suhrkamp. Translated by Heiner Bielefeldt. The original title is “Der Begriff des Politischen als Schlüssel zum staatsrechtlichen Werk Carl Schmitts”.

1. Schmitt, Carl, Verfassungslehre (1928) at 2, 125, passim.Google Scholar

2. Ibid. at 200.

3. Gierke, O., Das Wesen der menschlichen Verbände. Rektoratsrede (1902) at 8ff.Google Scholar

4. Schmitt, C., Der Begriff des Politischen. Text von 1932 mit einem Vorwort und drei Corrolarien (1963) (hereinafter Der Begriff) at 34-35: “War is by no means the goal or purpose or even content of politics. Being a real possibility, however, war is an ever existing presupposition which in a peculiar way determines human action and thought thereby yielding a specifically political behaviour.” This statement, though abbreviated and slightly different, can also be found in the third edition from 1933 at 17.Google Scholar

5. Böckenförde, E., “Staat—Gesellschaft—Kirche” in Christlicher Glaube in modemer Gesellschaft vol. 15 (1982) at 82.Google Scholar

6. Der Begriff, supra note 4 at 30f. See also the introduction of 1963, ibid. at 10f.

7. See Böckenförde, E., “Die Eigenart des Staatsrechts und der Staatsrechtswissenschaft” in Recht und Staat im sozialen Wandel. Festschrift H. U. Skupin (1983) at 317 and at 330 ff.Google Scholar

8. Schmitt, C., Politische Theologie, 2d ed. (1934) at 11.Google Scholar

9. Hence Schmitt writes (ibid. at 20) that sovereignty, defined legally, does not mean a monopoly of coercion or power but a monopoly of decision. See also Heller, H., Die Souveränität (1927) in Gesammelte Schriften vol. 2 (1971) at 120ff and 185ff).Google Scholar

* Translator's note: in German, state of exception—Ausnahmezustand—means state of emergency.

10. See the paper by Huber, E. R. in Quaritisch, H., ed., Complexio Oppositorum. Über Carl Schmitt (1988)at 33ff.Google Scholar

11. Der Begriff, supra note 4 at 39; see also Heller, H., supra note 9 at 185ff.Google Scholar This is the starting point of Schmitt's theory of confederation which rests on the assumption that, due to the homogeneity within the confederation, an existential conflict between the federal and the state level does not occur; hence the question of sovereignty can be left undecided. See Verfassungslehre, supra note 1 at 370ff.

12. Der Begriff, supra note 4 at 51-54. Loss of sovereignty would be synonymous to loss of final political decision. In regard to such a case, Schmitt writes: “If a people lacks the force or will to maintain itself within the sphere of the political, the political does not thereby disappear. What disappears is merely a weak people” [scil.: as a political unity]. Ibid. at 54.

13. The classical legal concept for such a case is protectorate; the political concept is hegemony.

14. The relationship between state and constitution is already implied in the concept of constitution in that this concept means the decision about the way and form of the political unity whose very existence is thus presupposed. See Verfassungslehre, supra note 1 at § 3 I at 21f. This does not preclude the possibility that in a particular historic and political situation the act of constitution-giving coincides with setting up the political unity of the state. An example is the situation of state secession. However, this is not necessarily the case, and it was not the case with the establishment of the great paradigmatic constitutions, such as the French constitution of 1791 or that of the United States in 1787.

15. Ibid. at §3, 20 and 21-23.

16. Ibid. at § 7 II, 62ff.

17. Hence Schmitt's constant criticism of the constitutional dualism as it is typical of the constitutional monarchy. This criticism can already be found in Verfassungslehre, supra note 1 at § 6 II 5, 53ff. It is much harsher in his Staatsgefüge und Zusammenbruch des Zweiten Reiches (1934) where Schmitt takes the constitutional conflict of Prussia as an example to demonstrate that a constitutional monarchy is a permanent compromise between opposite principles of political legitimacy. For a different opinion see Huber, E. R., Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789 vol. III (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1963) at 1-20 Google Scholar. Important in this connection is Rainer Wahl's argument that a constitutional review and constitutional monarchy could not fit together. See Wahl, R., “Der Vorrang der Verfassung” (1981) 20 Der Staat at 485ff.Google Scholar

18. This is not in contradiction to Schmitt's thesis in Legalität und Legitimität (1932) at 87f that, in the face of the crisis of the Weimar Republic, the second main part of the Weimar constitution should be preserved and purged of the contradictions and fictions of a merely technical and functional system of legality to which the first part had developed. Given that the second part of the constitution contained not only liberal basic rights (in the sense of private and societal rights) but also “orders of community life,” that part of the constitution could become effective only within the framework of a working “political” order whose restoration Schmitt therefore demands.

19. It is the common conviction of political philosophers as different as Thomas Hobbes and Immanuel Kant that the state and the concentration of sovereign power established by the state are necessary to protect the individual against the dangers and threats by their fellow people. See Hobbes, T., Elementa philosophica de cive (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) at chs. 5 and 6-7 Google Scholar; Hobbes, T., Leviathan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991) at ch. 17Google Scholar; Kant, I., Metaphysik der Sitten (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991) at Part I, § 44 Google Scholar; Kant, I., Ideen zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht vol. 9, ed. by Weischedel, at 40fGoogle Scholar.

20. Schmitt, C., Das Reichsgericht als Hüter der Verfassung (1929) (in Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze (1958) at 73ff and 97ff) (hereinafter Reichsgericht)Google Scholar; Schmitt, C., Der Hüter der Verfassung (1931) at 26-34.Google Scholar(hereinafter Hüter) By constitutional jurisdiction Schmitt means juridical decisions of constitutional conflicts in the original sense, that is, conflicts which concern the gravitational field of the political, such as the struggle for, as well as the maintenance, stabilization, and questioning of, political power and its execution.

21. Böckenförde, E.-W., supra note 7 at 320f.Google Scholar

22. Within the framework of the political system, the judge is called upon to interpret and apply laws independently of a possible former political struggle over their content. Rather than “making politics with different means,” he has simply to refer to the context of the existing legal order. Exactly this is the “political” Character of his task and role. See Luhmann, Niklas, “Funktionen der Rechtsprechung im politischen System” in Dritte Gewalt heute? Schriften der Evangelischen Akademie Hessen Nassau vol. 4 (1969) at 9fGoogle Scholar; Böckenförde, E.-W., Verfassungsfragen der Richterwahl (1974) at 89ff.Google Scholar

23. Schmitt, C., Guardian, supra note 20 at 48ffGoogle Scholar; Schmitt, Carl, Reichsgericht, supra note 20 at 97ff including the postscript at 108.Google Scholar

24. Hüter, , supra note 20 at 132ff.Google Scholar

25. Ibid. at 2.

26. Smend, R., Verfassung und Verfassungsrecht (1928) at 98 and 152f.Google Scholar

27. Ibid. at 78ff and l37ff.

28. See Verfassungslehre, supra note 1 at 163-70, esp. the schematic overview at 170.

29. Ibid. at 165.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid. at 168ff.

32. This criticism first appears in Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus (2d ed., 1926) at 22f. (hereinafter Geistesgeschichtlich Lage). In a succinct and straightforward way it is repeated in the article “Der bürgerliche Rechtsstaat”, Abendland (1928) at 202, as well as in Constitutional Theory, supra note 1 at 245f. The critique voiced in “Geistesgeschichtliche Lage” has explicitly been approved by Smend, R., supra note 26 at 37 footnote 4.Google Scholar

33. Verfassungslehre, supra note 1 at 168.

34. Schmitt, C., Weiterentwicklung des totalen Staates in Deutschland (1932/33), republished in his Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze (1958) at 360 Google Scholar; see also Machtposition des modernen Staates (1933) at 368f.

35. See the impressively sober and well balanced analysis by Eichenberger, K., “Beziehungen zwischen Massenmedien und Demokratie”, Festschrift Leo Schürmann (Freiburg/Switzerland: 1978) at 405ff.Google Scholar

36. Schmitt, C., “Inhalt und Bedeutung des zweiten Hauptteils der Reichsverfassung”, Handbuch des Staatsrechts vol. 2 (1932) at 584 Google Scholar; Anschütz, G., Die Verfassung des deutschen Reiches vom 11. August 1919, 14th ed. (1933) remark 4 with note 2 referring to art. 135.Google Scholar

37. See Der Begriff, supra note 4 at 40-45; also Schmitt, C., Staatsethik und pluralistischer Staat (1930)Google Scholar; Schmitt, C., Positionen und Begriffe (1940) at 133ff and esp. at 136-42.Google Scholar

38. Schmitt, C., Hüter, supra note 20 at 71: “Pluralism, however, means a majority of organized social power, running across different areas of the state as well as across the boundaries of countries or municipalities. This social power, although lacking the quality of a state, nevertheless manipulates the will-formation of the state.”Google Scholar

39. Schmitt, C., Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes (1938) at 117: “It is essential for an indirect power that it blurs the relationship between command and political danger, power and responsibility, protection and obedience. Being unaccountable in its indirect and yet effective exercise of power, it takes all the advantages of political power and avoids all its dangers.”Google Scholar

40. Hüter, , supra note 20 at 114f, 132ff.Google Scholar

41. Ibid. at l49ff and l56ff.

42. Verfassungslehre, supra note 1 at 212 and 210.

43. Römischer Katholizismus und politische Form (2d ed., 1925) at 25ff (referring to personal dignity and representation of a spiritual principle); Geistesgeschichtliche Lage, supra note 32 at footnote 3 to 43 (applying representation to the political realm); Verfassungslehre, supra note 1 at 204-16 (development of representation as a constitutional concept).

44. See Böckenförde, E.-W., Demokratie und Repräsentation (1983) at 21-26.Google Scholar

45. Verfassungslehre, supra note 1 at 209: “Representation means to render something invisible publicly visible and hence present.” See also ibid. at 207.

46. On the process of representation, see Draht, M., “Die Entwicklung der Volksrepräsentation” (1954), Rausch, H. V., ed., Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Repräsentation und der Repräsentatiwerfassung (1995) at 260ff (esp. at 275ff and 292ff).Google Scholar

47. Verfassungslehre, supra note 1 at 207.

48. Ibid. at 214.

49. Ibid. at 212.

50. Ibid. at 210f.

** Translator's note: Böckenförde here alludes to an article by Karl Löwith who accuses Schmitt of propagating a radical political decisionism (= occasionalism) by which the very continuity of time and experience is dissolved. See Löwith, Karl, “Der okkasionelle Dezisionismus von C. Schmitt” in Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Zur Kritik der geschichtlichen Existenz (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960) at 93-126.Google Scholar