1 This is one flaw of the two major English-language studies of Schmitt: Bendersky, Joseph, Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich (Princeton: Princeton University, 1983);CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Schwab, George, The Challenge of the Exception: An Introduction to the Ideas of Carl Schmitt (New York: Greenwood, 1989).Google Scholar I also believe that these two works are apologetic in their treatments of Schmitt's relationship to the Nazis. See my: “The Fascism of Carl Schmitt: A Response to George Schwab,” German Politics and Society 29 (1993)Google Scholar. For one notable exception to the widespread tendency to underplay Schmitt's legal concerns: Slagstad, Rune, “Liberal Constitutionalism and its Critics: Carl Schmitt and Max Weber,” in Constitutionalism and Its Critics, ed. Elster, Jon and Slagstad, Rune (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar. The German-language literature on Schmitt's legal theory is far more impressive; let me just mention one study that I have found particularly powerful: Maus, Ingeborg, Bürgerliche Rechtstheorie und Faschismus. Zur sozialen Funktion und aktuellen Wirkung der Theorie Carl Schmitts (Munich: Wilhelm Fink: 1976)Google Scholar. For a survey of the German literature: Mehring, Reinhard, “Carl Schmitts Lehre von der Auflösung des Liberalismus: Das Sinngefüge der Verfassungslehre als historisches Urteil,” Zeitschrift für Politik 38 (1991)Google Scholar; Mehring, , “Vom Umgang mit Carl Schmitt. Zur neueren Literatur,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 19 (1993): esp. 399–404.Google Scholar

2 Preuβ, Ulrich, “Der Begriff der Verfassung und ihre Beziehung zur Politik,” in Zum Begriff der Verfassung. Die Ordnung des Politischen, ed. Preuβ, (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1994), p. 10Google Scholar. Also: Preuβ, , “Constitutional Powermaking for the New Polity: Some Deliberations on the Relations Between Constituent Power and the Constitution,” Cardozo Law Review 14 (1993): 649.Google Scholar

3 Here, I cannot offer an adequate discussion of contemporary strands in left-wing jurisprudence that parallel, oftentimes disturbingly, Schmitt's ideas. But many recent critics stand in Schmitt's shadow by emphasizing the inevitably willful and arbitrary nature of constitutional government. One can even imagine Schmitt applauding Derrida's view, recently defended by Bonnie Honig, that “every system is secured by placeholders that are irrevocably, structurally arbitrary and illegitimate. They enable the system but are illegitimate from its vantage point.” For a view of liberal constitutionalism as inherently arbitrary: Honig, Bonnie, “Declarations on Independence: Arendt and Derrida on the Problem of Founding a Republic,” American Political Science Review 85 (1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this vein, also: Mouffe, Chantal, The Return of the Political (New York: Verso, 1993).Google Scholar, For a fine critical discussion of these trends: Benhabib, Seyla, “Democracy and Difference: Reflections on the Metapolitics of Lyotard and Derrida,” Journal of Political Philosophy 2 (1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Strauss, Leo, “Comments on Carl Schmitt's Begriff des Politischen,” in Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. Schwab, George (New Brunswick: Rutgers University, 1976), p. 105.Google Scholar

5 Schmitt, Carl, Die Verfassungslehre (Munich: Duncker and Humblot, 1928), p. 9.Google Scholar, Die Verfassungslehre is the centerpiece of Schmitt's jurisprudence; thus, my emphasis on it here. But Schmitt's Weimar-era ideas on constitutional government are also developed in a series of further texts as well: Der Hüter der Verfassung (Tübingen: Mohr, 1931)Google Scholar; Legalität und Legitimität (Munich: Duncker and Humblot, 1932)Google Scholar; Verfassungrechtliche Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1924–1954 (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1973).Google Scholar

6 On the role of the concept of the generality of law in liberal legal thinking: Schmitt, , Die Verfassungslehre, pp. 138–57.Google Scholar

7 For Schmitt's most important polemic against nonclassical forms of law: Unabhängigkeit der Richter, Gleichheit vor dem Gesetz, und Gewährleisting des Privateigentums nach der Weimarer Verfassung (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1926).Google Scholar Schmitt's 1920s writings often echo the concerns of contemporary liberals anxious about the administrative state. But by 1932 Schmitt had moderated his anxieties: seeing the administrative state as essential to modern politics, but simultaneously considering it inconsistent with the liberal rule of law, Schmitt became a defender of new forms of discretionary, non-general law. Schmitt, , Legalität und Legitimität, as well as his Über die drei Arten des rechtswissenschaftlichen Denkens (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934)Google Scholar. This second stage in Schmitt's thought is the object of Hayek's criticisms of Schmitt, in The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1944).Google Scholar

8 Kelsen, Hans, Reine Rechtslehre (Darmstadt: Scientia Verlag, 1985), p. 64.Google Scholar

9 Schmitt, , Die Verfassungslehre, p. 9.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 67. Although Kelsen is left unnamed, Schmitt is clearly referring to Kelsen's democratic theory and its emphasis on the centrality of compromise.

11 Ibid., p. 11. But why does Schmitt seem to accept the inevitability of the demise of natural law? In The Concept of the Political he endorses Weber's famous assertion that the political and moral “life spheres” are unavoidably distinct in the modern world. In other words, he acknowledges the accuracy of some features of Weber's theory of “disenchantment” (Entzauberung) (Schmitt, , Concept of the Political, pp. 26–28Google Scholar).

12 Schmitt, , Die Verfassungslehre, pp. 11–36.Google Scholar. At first glance, Schmitt's argument here seems persuasive. Many contemporary commentators (for example, Bendersky and Schwab) have praised Schmitt on this point. But a word of warning is in order. In Legality and Legitimacy, Schmitt similarly criticizes positivistic ideas of constitutionalism by contrasting it to a (preferred) model of “valueladen” legitimacy. But Schmitt expressly identifies this system of legitimacy with a form of dictatorship (Schmitt, , Legalität und Legitimität, pp. 87, 96–98Google Scholar).

13 Schmitt, , Die Verfassungstheorie, p. 8.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 50.

15 Schmitt, Concept of the Political, p. 27Google Scholar., This passage might suggest that Schmitt is a modern day Hobbesian intent on demonstrating the primacy of power vis-a-vis law. One immediate problem with this interpretation is that Schmitt repeatedly gives his interpretation of friend-foe politics a radically nationalistic and even ethnic connotation. Unlike Hobbes, Schmitt is writing in the aftermath of the emergence of modern forms of nationalism and xenophobia, and he accordingly gives his otherwise Hobbesian claims a gloss that probably would have been alien to Hobbes. As Preuβ has noted, Schmitt's “ethnicist” constitutional theory tends to rest on a substitution of the ethnos for the demos: das Volk is conceived as an “ethnic and cultural oneness,” with a “capacity to realize its otherness in relation both to others and the liberal-universalist category of mankind” (Preuβ, , “Constitutional Powermaking for the New Polity,” p. 650).Google Scholar

16 Schmitt, , Concept of the Political, p. 27.Google Scholar

17 Schmitt, Der Hüter der Verfassung; for Kelsen's reply: Wer soll der Hüter der Verfassung sein? (Berlin: Rothschild, 1931).Google Scholar The existential foe can very well be a domestic political opponent.

18 For an excellent account of this matter: Dyzenhaus, David, Truth's Revenge: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, and Hermann Heller in Weimar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

19 Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology, trans. Schwab, George (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), p. 28.Google Scholar

20 Schmitt, , Die Verfassungstheorie, p. 87Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., p. 87.

22 For Schmitt, “when the power and authority of the constituent power, whose decision the constitution rests on, is recognized”, a constitution is “legitimate”. Power is then described as something “necessarily real”, whereas authority implies “continuity” and tradition. Moreover, “in every state, power and authority coexist and depend on each other” (Schmitt, , Die Verfassungslehre, pp. 75, 87Google Scholar). For a perceptive early criticism of this aspect of Schmitt's theory: Voegelin, Erich, “Die Verfassungslehre von Carl Schmitt”, Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht 11 (1931)Google Scholar. Voegelin endorses some of Schmitt's criticisms of legal positivism. But he criticizes Schmitt's failure to integrate normative concerns into his analysis of the problem of legitimacy. Below I discuss the conceptual roots of this error.

23 Schmitt, Carl, Die Verfassungstheorie, pp. 20–36Google Scholar. “Carl Schmitt, by adopting the American theory of the ‘inherent limitations upon the amending power’, tried to distinguish between amending and violating modifications of the Constitution. He was of the opinion that amendments to the Constitution could not assail the ‘Constitution as a basic decision’. … The fundamental decisions regarding value preferences which the Constitution embodies, Schmitt thought, could not be modified even by the qualified parliamentary majority which [in Weimar] had the power to amend the Constitution” (Neumann, Franz L., The Democratic and Authoritarian State [New York: Free Press, 1957], pp. 53–54Google Scholar).

24 Schmitt, , Die Verfassungslehre, pp. 56–60.Google Scholar

25 Hannah Arendt criticizes precisely those elements of French revolutionary thought that Schmitt praises here. In her view, Absolutism contributed to the failings of the French Revolution, whereas the Americans were fortunate because they were spared the specter of Absolutism. For Schmitt, the legacy of Absolutism is central to understanding liberal constitutionalism. Despite liberalism's hostility to Absolutism, liberal constitutionalism would lack the most minimal “political” element unless it preserved something of the heritage of Absolutism. Schmitt dismisses the importance of the American constitutional tradition. Purportedly, the Americans lack a “genuine” constitutional theory, and The Federalist Papers provide mere details about “practical organizational questions”[!] (Schmitt, , Die Verfassungstheorie, pp. 78–79Google Scholar). For Arendt's view: On Revolution (New York: Penguin, 1963Google Scholar). For a discussion of the fascinating dialogue here between Arendt and Schmitt, my: “Revolutions and Constitutions: Hannah Arendt's Challenge to Carl Schmitt”, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence (forthcoming, 1997).

26 Schmitt accepts the unavoidability of democratic sovereignty in the modern world. See, for example, his account of the “victory of democracy” in The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 22–32Google Scholar. As we will see, the principle of popular sovereignty is reformulated in a highly idiosyncratic manner in his theory.

27 Schmitt, , Political Theology, p. 66Google Scholar. For a thoughtful criticism of Schmitt's reinterpretation of Sieyes: Breuer, Stefan, “Nationalstaat und pouvoir constituant bei Sieyes und Carl Schmitt”, Archiv für Rechts-und Sozialphilosophie 70 (1984).Google Scholar

28 Schmitt, , Die Verfassungslehre, p. 79.Google Scholar Also: Schmitt, Carl, Die Diktatur (Leipzig: Dunker and Humblot, 1928), pp. 140–43.Google Scholar

29 Schmitt, , Die Verfassungslehre, p. 77.Google Scholar

30 Fuchs, Richard, “Carl Schmitts Verfassungslehre” Juristische Wochenschrift 60 (1931): 1661.Google Scholar

31 Rousseau, , The Social Contract, III. 12–13.Google Scholar

32 Schmitt, , Die Verfassungslehre, p. 315.Google Scholar

33 Schmitt, , Legalität und Legitimität, p. 93.Google Scholar

34 This is the key argument of Legalität und Legitimität. The relationship between Schmitt's proposals for an authoritarian presidentialism in the early 1930s and his subsequent endorsement of the Nazi regime is complicated. But let me just make one observation here: we probably both need to distinguish Schmitf's own proposals from “mature” Nazism and acknowledge the manner in which many aspects of Schmitt's theory-most importantly, his “dedsionism”-led him to embrace Nazism. For a critique of Schmitt's constitutional thought from an unambiguously pro-Nazi position: Koellreutter, Otto, “Volk und Staat in der Verfassungskrise. Zugleich eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Verfassungslehre Carl Schmitts”, in Zum Neubau der Verfnssung, ed. Berber, Fritz (Berlin: Junker and Dunnhaupt, 1933).Google Scholar

35 Kirchheimer, Otto, Politics, Law and Social Change (New York: Columbia University, 1969), p. 78.Google Scholar

36 For a discussion of Dworkin in this context: Dyzenhaus, David, “‘Now the Machine Runs Itself’: Carl Schmitt on Hobbes and Kelsen” Cardozo Law Review 16 (1994).Google Scholar

37 For a recent discussion of this issue: Stephen Holmes, “Precommitment and the Paradox of Democracy”, in Elster and Slagstad, Constitutionalism and Democracy.

38 The Weimar theorist Hermann Heller makes this observation in his brilliant but unfairly forgotten Die Souveranität (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927)Google Scholar. For an excellent discussion of Heller's theory and its relationship to the ideas of Kelsen and Schmitt: Schluchter, Wolfgang, Entscheidung für den sozialen Rechtsstaat. Hermann Heller und die staatstheoretische Diskussion in der Weimarer Republik (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1983)Google Scholar. Other Weimar-era writers also saw Kelsen's positivism as complicit in Schmitt's dedsionism. For example, Franz Neumann observed that “by throwing out of account all relative problems of political and sotial power, it [Kelsen's positivism] paves the way for decisionism, for the acceptance of political decisions no matter where they originate or what their content, so long as sufficient power stands behind them” (Neumann, , Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism [New York: Harper and Row, 1965], p. 47Google Scholar).

39 Much of the literature sympathetic to Schmitt misses this: see Schwab, , Challenge to the Exception; Bendersky, Carl Schmitt.Google Scholar

40 For one recent interpretation of Schmitt that focusses on his hostility to universalistic elements of liberalism: Kaufmann, Matthias, Recht ohne Regel? Die philosophischen Prinzipien in Carl Schmitts Staatstheorie (Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1988)Google Scholar. I also commit this mistake in my: Between the Norm and the Exception: The Frankfurt School and the Rule of Law (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994).Google Scholar

41 Obviously, vast differences separate such authors, and modern liberalism surely does offer a vision of the rule of law different from, say, Aquinas's. My point here is simply that Schmitt's conceptual paraphernalia just does not allow him to appreciate the need to make distinctions of precisely this sort.

42 Unabhängigkeit der Richter, Gleichheit vor dem Gesetz und Gewährleistung des Privateigentums nach der Weimarer Verfassung, p. 23.

43 Schmitt, , Die Verfassungslehre, p. 154Google Scholar. He then makes the peculiar comment that equality [before the law] is only possible where minimally a majority of cases can be affected” (p. 155). In Unabhängigkeit der Richter, Gleichheit vor dem Gesetz und Gewährleistung des Privateigentums nach der Weimarer Verfassung he occasionally formulates a much broader conception of general law as well: general law is incompatible with regulations affecting “several individuals” (p. 22).

44 Schmitt, , Political Theology, p. 21.Google Scholar

45 As Dyzenhaus rightly notes, Schmitt considers “Kelsen's restatement of legal positivism Û the fulfillment of the Enlightenment project which attempts to subject human interaction to an impersonal order rules: the rule of law and not men” (Dyzenhaus, “‘The Machine Runs Itself’: Carl Schmitt on Hobbes and Kelsen”, p. 10). In the process, Schmitt makes things too easy for himself: Kelsen clearly breaks radically with much of Enlightenment liberalism. Locke and even Kant would have been worried about Kelsen's value-relativism; one can imagine Montesquieu shaking his head in disbelief at Kelsen's view that an empirical analysis of political power has no rightful place within jurisprudence.

46 Schmitt, , Political Theology, p. 21.Google Scholar

47 This is surely a complicated issue. But a strong argument can be made that liberal regimes have developed effective legal “normativities” for the regulation of crisis situations. Fraenkel, Ernst, ed., Der Staatsnotstand (Berlin: Colloquium, 1964).Google Scholar

48 Schmitt, , Die Verfassungslehre, pp. 9–10Google Scholar. In a manuscript left unfinished at the time of his death in 1973, the elder Kelsen did finally question this dramatic juxtaposition of the will to the norm. For a helpful discussion of this development: Paulson, Stanley, “Kelsen's Legal Theory: The Final Round”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 12 (1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Schmitt, , Die Verfassungslehre, p. 76.Google Scholar

50 Schmitt, , Political Theology, p. 66Google Scholar. The term “pure” here is revealing: Kelsen's “pure” theory of law is replaced by Schmitt with a theory emphasizing the “purity” of the decision.

51 On democracy and value-relativism: Kelsen, Hans, Wesen und Wert der Demokratie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1929).Google Scholar

52 Weber, Max, Economy and Society, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California, 1979), p. 4Google Scholar. See also: Heller, Hermann, “Staat”, in Handwörterbuch der Soziologie (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1955).Google Scholar

53 On Schmitt's relationship to National Socialist law: Rüthers, Bernd, Entartetes Recht. Rechtslehren und Kronjuristen im Dritten Reich (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988).Google Scholar

54 Schmitt, , Die Verfassungslehre, pp. 24–25.Google Scholar

55 Ibid., p. 253.