S
Schmitt, Carl
Carlo Galli
Department of History and Cultures, University of
Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Carl Schmitt (1888–1985). German jurist. He
always qualified himself as a jurist, but the
radicality and the innovative character of his sci-
entific performance have made him a reference
point for the twentieth century debates not only
on public, constitutional and international law, but
also for political science, and for the history of
political thought and of institutions.
The Main Features of Schmitt’s Thought
Schmitt’s work can be described as an answer to
three challenges: the political crisis of the State,
the theoretical crisis of rationalist Positivism, and
the affirmation of Hans Kelsen’s juridical science,
based on the objectivity and comprehensiveness
of norms’ inner logic.
Schmitt maintained a distinction between Law
and reality, laws and politics. The real does not
contain any order or norm in itself; and the Law
has not in itself the strength to become real. But he
brought these distinct fields in relation to one
another through the “decision” (Entscheidung),
made by different subjects: the judge, the sover-
eign, the people. The “decision” makes the law
© Springer Nature B.V. 2021
M. Sellers, S. Kirste (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_408-1
effective in the “concrete facts,” that can take
place as “cases of exception”
(Ausnahmezustand). The decision is an act that
can realize an always transitory mediation
between the above-mentioned opposite fields.
Therefore decision is part of the Law, not exterior
to it.
Schmitt’s position is based on the
anthropologic pessimism inspired by French and
Spanish counter-revolutionary thinkers,
preventing him from thinking of reality as a self-
realization of the Spirit, and adhering to a positiv-
ist thought based on contingency. His Catholic
orientation (Schmitt 1923b) provided a scientific
point of view that allowed him to articulate an
innovative conception of Law. Schmitt opposed
Idealism, Immanentism, and Liberalism because
he did not believe that the law can simply emerge
from history or from parliamentary debate; he
opposed Marxism, because he did not conceive
of Law just as the mirroring of power; he opposed
Scientism, Positivism, and Functionalism because
he regarded Law as neither a function of society,
nor as a simple facilitation of social needs, nor as a
simply rational command of the State; he opposed
Normativism and Formalism, because Law is
always incomplete and does not coincide with its
inner logics; lastly he opposed the discourse of
Natural Law and Moralism. Consequently,
Schmitt criticized both Kelsen and Hermann
Heller, both the legal Positivists and the Neo-
Kantians. He conceived Law in a historical, deter-
mined, concrete, genealogic, and dynamic way,
2 Schmitt, Carl
and was therefore far from both rationalism and
irrationalism. This is why Schmitt requires a con-
stant distinction between Law (jus; Recht), the
law (lex; Gesetz), and decrees (Massnahme,
Verordnung): the first is the Idea that becomes a
concrete legal reality only through decision; the
second is a legal norm produced by an established
power; the third is a technical administrative
measure.
Early Juridical Writings
Schmitt’s early writings are focused on the penal
law. He rejected the idea that one could deduce the
universality of a formal concept (“guilt”) from
empirical facticity (intention or negligence as
“types of guilt”) (Schmitt 1910). He therefore
argued that it is necessary to presume the duality
between factual reality and juridical form. This
position was only seemingly a Neo-Kantian one,
since Schmitt was preoccupied with detecting a
“bridge,” a concrete and effective mediation
between the ideal and the real, the interior and
the exterior dimension of action. The link is pro-
vided by the concept of “end” (Zweck): the indi-
vidual’s exterior action is the “position of an end,”
the concrete realization of an act of willing. When
this act is in conflict with the objective will of
society, that is, with the penal law, then it turns
into “guilt.”
Schmitt next dealt with the problem of decision
in legal practice, when a judge faces a “concrete
case” (Schmitt 1912). Through the concept of Als
ob, due to Hans Vaihinger, and through a criticism
of Gustav Radbruch’s “static” Neo-Kantian con-
ception of the norm, he concluded that judgment
cannot mechanically derive from the logical
development of the norm and from the interpreta-
tion of the law as an act of the will, presumed to be
subjectively or objectively rational. Rather, the
judgment is a “fiction,” an ad hoc construction
whose aim is to realize concrete ends: in this
case, the judge must make a decision liable to be
shared by “the other judge.” So doing, Schmitt
made a distinction between the interpretation and
the judicial decision, the logics of the norm and
the practical moment, the Rechtslehre and the
Rechtspraxis. His aim was to assign a central
place to the implementation of the Law
(Rechtsverwirklichung) and the principle of legal
determinacy (Rechtsbestimmtheit), that is,
the concreteness of legal life, which differs from
the abstract “legal security” (Rechtssicherheit),
the mere conformity to the norm.
Schmitt further developed this topic through a
philosophical discussion of the relationship
between Recht and Macht, Law and Power
(Schmitt 1914). Law coincides with neither the
fact nor with power; the Law must be
implemented, starting from the assumption that
between Recht and Macht it is necessary to build
a mediation that depends upon the State’s “sover-
eign decision.” The Idea of Law, therefore, pre-
cedes the State and is not identifiable either with
the State or with the law; at the same time, the Idea
of Law cannot be implemented without the State.
Schmitt, therefore, sided neither with mediation
nor with immediacy, neither with Formalism nor
with power politics. Rather, politics is the junction
between the Idea of Law and contingency and has
therefore a metaphysical importance: the modern
age and its political outcome, the State, cannot
work either without transcendence, that is, the
Idea, or without its realization through decision.
Decision, Secularization, Constitution
These issues became crucial during the Weimar
period, when Schmitt established a strong connec-
tion between sovereignty, decision, and the con-
stitutional order. In Dictatorship (Schmitt 1921)
he makes a distinction between the system of
norms and the concrete implementation of Law
through its suspension (“commissarial dictator-
ship”) or its ex novo establishment through the
“sovereign dictatorship.” By now, politics gains
a fundamental role in Schmitt’s discourse, even if
this role is not characterized in an anti-legal fash-
ion: the political decision is the only way through
which Law is implemented. It is the origin of
political-juridical orders.
These arguments are systematized in Political
Theology (Schmitt 1922), where the controversy
with Kelsen is stronger. Schmitt’s fundamental
Schmitt, Carl
suggestion is that the Idea of Law must be
implemented in a particular situation. This takes
place through the intervention of sovereignty,
which is defined as “the decision on the case of
exception,” namely, with regard to the concrete
“extreme case.” The extreme case falls outside the
norm; however, it must be brought into the legal
system: this end is pursued through decision,
rather than through formal reasoning. The deci-
sion establishes a division that produces concrete
unity. The decision does not derive from specific
contents. What is essential is rather the presence
of a personal subject, the sovereign, who takes the
responsibility for the decision. Just like exception
and decision, the sovereign is outside the legal
system, while being part of Law; both the “case
of exception” and decision precede and explain
normality.
Neither Positivism nor Kelsen understood that
the decision on the exception is part of Law, and
not simply its “external precondition.” Kelsen in
particular carried to the extremes the modern con-
ception of law as impersonal, rationalistic, techni-
cal, and self-sufficient. In Schmitt’s view, Kelsen
ignored that Law is not a closed system of secu-
rity; rather it is open both to the extreme case and
to transcendency, to the Idea of Law and to its
concrete implementation by the sovereign
decision.
As a consequence, according to Schmitt, the
modern age cannot be regarded as a complete
secularization of transcendence, that is, as the
triumph of rationalism and of positive science.
Rather, it is necessary to understand the meta-
physical structure of the modern age. For realizing
the Idea of Law, a decision is needed: that means
that transcendence cannot be secularized through
reason and technique. Modern history and pro-
gress are nothing but subsequent shifts from one
metaphysics – and its corresponding political
form – to the other, from Theism to Deism to
Pantheism to Atheism, that is, from the monarchy
legitimized by the Divine Law to the Liberal State,
from the Democratic State to the world of tech-
nique. The modern age is “the epoch of neutrali-
zations and de-politicizations” (Schmitt 1929),
but does not succeed in its goal: the final outcome,
the end of metaphysics, is not a neutral, rational
3
order, but a disordered reality inhabited by con-
flict, a reality that can be temporarily reduced to
order only through decision.
Decisionism holds together the general theory
of Law, the critique of the modern age and the
critique of progress. Here again, Schmitt was on a
collision course with Kelsen, who had denied the
scientific relevance of metaphysics, i.e., of the
concept of God and the State. As to the link
between secularization and exception, Schmitt
distanced himself also from Hegel, whose Protes-
tant progressivism he had always criticized, and
from Weber who was bound to individualistic
rationalization, much more than Schmitt himself.
In contrast to Weber, Schmitt criticized modern
rationalism and its main political outcome,
namely, Liberalism. He contested the bourgeois
belief that the law can be created through rational
discourse, within the parliament (Schmitt 1923a).
Legal Formalism and political individualism –
that he already criticized as unable to act politi-
cally (Schmitt 1919) – share the same incapacity
of understanding the origin of concrete orders. In
this regard, Kelsen replied to Schmitt that the
justification of parliament rests on the functional
necessity of a representative order in which the
law could be produced through relativizing
compromises.
In Constitutional Theory (Schmitt 1928)
Schmitt distinguished between the Constitution
and constitutional laws: only the latter can be
suspended by the constituted powers in case of
emergency, as the article 48 of the Weimar consti-
tution stated. On the contrary, the fundamental
decision that established and oriented the whole
legal system is an act made by the subject of
the constituent power, that is – in democracy –
by the people. The Constitution is the decision of
the people concerning the modality and the form
of their own political existence. Consequently, it
is the “material” origin of the State’s political
unity. Only secondarily the Constitution is the
organization of public powers according to a
political idea: the bourgeois liberal Constitutions,
for instance, are based on the security of individ-
ual rights and on the division of the State powers.
Thus, the Constitution concerns the political sta-
tus of the people rather than a legal principle. To
4 Schmitt, Carl
say that a State has a constitution is incorrect:
rather, the State is the constitution of the people
in their concrete existence, and in their concrete
rights.
The political essence of the constitution is
organized in two different principles: identity,
that is, the presence of the people in itself, and
representation, that is, the production of an artifi-
cial unitary political form; in other words, on
national democratic homogeneity and on the par-
liament. The liberal-democratic State, like the
Weimar Republic, is a mixed form where different
and even opposite legal principles coexist: first,
the democratic factor of homogeneity and equal-
ity, which is recognized through the establishment
of the referendum (Schmitt 1927) and of the social
rights of the citizens; second, the liberal, juridical-
formal rights and securities.
In this way, Schmitt separated, in principle, the
constitution and the State, democracy and liberal-
ism. Similarly, he distinguished between legiti-
macy and legality: the former is not located in
the State – which, in the age of legal positivism
has become the place of formal legality – but
rather in the constituent decision of the people.
Legitimacy is not simply a pre-legal value but is a
decision for a concrete political-legal form
(Schmitt 1932a).
The State, the “Political” and the Crisis of
the Weimar Republic
Through the notions of decision and constitution,
Schmitt relativized the State. The State is for him a
historical and contingent order. It assumes differ-
ent configurations according to the forms taken by
the decisive political will whence it originates:
jurisdictional State, governmental State, adminis-
trative State, legislative-parliamentary State. The
latter defines itself as “rule of law,” while in truth
any State is such. Besides, the State is neither
“stable” nor legally “close.” Its very goal is to be
unitary, inclusive, and to neutralize internal polit-
ical conflicts; but it can succeed by means of a
decision. Thus, the political unity is grounded in
and crossed by division and exclusion, which are
implicit in the decision.
This anti-formalistic and anti-individualistic
drive and this tragic vision of reality had a back-
lash on political theory in The Concept of the
Political (Schmitt 19323b). Here Schmitt stated
that the essence of politics does not lie in the
power and in the institutions of the State, but
rather in the “friend-foe” relationship. This is a
radical conflict that precedes the State and the
institutions, and transcends any possibility of a
rational dialogue among the contenders. The
“political” is not a field, as the ethical, the eco-
nomical, the esthetical; on the contrary, political
oppositions, that is public and not merely personal
conflicts, may form in any field. The “political” is
the conflicting, concrete and nonrational structure
of reality. In Schmitt’s legal thought, this structure
is defined as and represented by exception; as a
legal system originates from the decision on the
exception, likewise the political order originates
from the decision on the opposition. In Schmitt’
view, Liberalism does not understand that the
“political” is the origin of State politics, and tries
to escape it by transforming it into competition
and discussion.
Later on (Schmitt 1938a), Schmitt credited
Hobbes – that he later reads in theological-
political, rather than decisionistic terms (Schmitt
1944) – for having laid the foundations of the
modern State with the aim of finding a way out
of the civil wars of religion, and for having based
the state not only on the contract, but also on myth
and decision. Nonetheless he criticized Hobbes
for the rationalism, individualism, and positivism
prevailing in his thought. Through the Enlighten-
ment and Liberalism, these features depoliticized
the State, turning it either into an impersonal
machine, unable to defend itself from its enemies,
or into a pure technical power, deprived of any
juridical dimension.
Every order, the State included, which arises
from the “political,” namely, is oriented against an
opponent. And every order must be able to recog-
nize, in order to eliminate it, that hostility can
always emerge again. The source of legitimacy
is precisely the management of the “political”
through the constituent decision and through the
exercise of sovereignty. The “political” is poten-
tially an ever-present challenge within the State
Schmitt, Carl
and in international relations: both the internal
peace and the universal peace are an ideological
construction. Once again, Schmitt lined up against
Kelsen’s formalism and universalism and, more
broadly, against supranational organizations
(Schmitt 1940).
Through sovereignty the modern State has
exercised, for some centuries, the monopoly of
the “political,” but when the State is depoliticized
then subjects different from the State can become
the bearer of the “political,” in a more and more
“pluralistic,” conflict-ridden, scenario. Thus, the
“political” entails a further relativization of the
State because other subjects can be its bearers,
like, for instance, the Partisan, charged with an
extremely intense and concrete, that is, “telluric,”
polemic character, which differs from the absolute
and rootless conflictual character of the revolu-
tionary by profession (Schmitt 1963).
With these concepts, Schmitt read the final
crisis of Weimar as the suicide of a State.
Expanding its activity to the whole society, the
Weimar system transformed itself into a “total
State out of weakness” (Schmitt 1931)
succumbing in the face of the pluralism of party
politics, economical and bureaucratic powers, and
in the face of the resulting “polycracy.” Schmitt
made an appeal to the original legitimacy of the
republic, that is, to the popular decision for a
liberal and democratic State, to defend it from
internal enemies, namely, extremist parties. He
suggested that the legislative power not be
entrusted to the Parliament, which was paralyzed
by the “negative majorities,” but to the President
of the Reich, elected by the people, based on
article 48 of the Constitution (Schmitt 1932a).
The State cannot simply be grounded in the prin-
ciple of legality because, in this case, legitimacy
would be undermined by legality and the enemies
of the Constitution would have equal chances to
legally take the power. But only the subject of
sovereignty, that is, the State and not the Länder,
have this power of exclusion, as Schmitt stated in
the Lipsian Staatsgerichtshof in 1932, where he
represented the Reich against Prussia, defended
by Heller (Schmitt 1940).
As a consequence, Schmitt depicted a “total
State out of energy” (Schmitt 1958), namely, an
5
authoritarian post-liberal State. In his conception,
however, this State would still be democratic
because it is plebiscitary in character, and would
still remain within the framework of the Weimar
constitution. This would be a less extended State
than the one which is “total out of weakness,” and
able to keep together the legal form and the polit-
ical force of deciding on the enemy, of creating
internal unity by excluding the anti-systemic
forces and of depoliticizing the economy.
Schmitt’s proposal was opposed by Kelsen, that
wanted to entrust the defense of the constitution
not to the “neutral” power of the President,
namely, to the executive power, but rather to the
jurisdictional power of the Constitutional Court,
in order to avoid the politicization of the
Constitution.
The Nazi Era
Schmitt’s endorsement of the Nazi regime was
opposed also by some components of the regime
itself, and this induced him to stop writing about
internal politics after 1936. It also provoked his
imprisonment by the Allies from 1945 to 1947,
the expulsion from teaching, and a long-lasting
damnatio memoriae. Schmitt justified his turning
point with the necessity to recognize the new
regime born out of the election of 5 March 1933,
which in his view was a plebiscitary exercise of
the constituent power that gave birth to a new
provisional constitution, the “Enabling Act” of
24 March 1933 (Schmitt 1933).
Schmitt’s Nazi production is marked both by
continuity and discontinuity. The hostility to for-
malism, liberalism, and parliamentarism persists;
whereas what’s new is the effort to exit
decisionism and to develop a “thinking of the
concrete orders,” or of the legal systems, partially
borrowed from Maurice Hauriou and Santi
Romano (Schmitt 1934). Therefore, in this
phase, the legal concreteness is not based on deci-
sion, but rather on concepts such as the “popular
identity based on race,” the “people,” the Führung
(that takes the place of sovereignty), in opposition
to the formal equality and the “impersonality” of
modern laws. Thus, the idea of legal concreteness
6 Schmitt, Carl
shifts toward an organicism coupled with anti-
Semitism. In turn, the role of the people changes:
they become passive, while the “political” is man-
aged by the Party and its Leader, which are not
organs of the State. Having by now lost the
monopoly of the “political,” the State remains as
an administrative system, whereas the nation
expands, beyond the State, in the dimension of
the Empire (Reich), that exercises hegemony in a
“Great space” (Grossraum) closed to foreign
political and economic interventions (Schmitt
1939). Schmitt’s goal was to contribute to the
redefinition of Nazi international law. However,
these concepts are different from that of a Lebens-
raum grounded in race.
Toward the end of the Nazi era (Schmitt 1944),
Schmitt saw legal science, which was still con-
crete and vital in Hegel and Savigny, turning itself
into pure technique, as a consequence of the pre-
vailing bourgeois and liberal “State of laws” and
of positivism; legality and legitimacy become
antithetical and no longer complementary con-
cepts, and under pressure from the growing
administrative needs to which the State is subdued
in the twentieth century, legality turns into the
domain of decrees. The critique of liberalism and
positivism becomes a critique of the entire Mod-
ern age and of its dynamics, looking for some-
thing able to withhold them: namely, as Schmitt
says quoting Saint Paul, a Katechon.
The “Nomos”
In the last phase of his work, Schmitt went back to
international law, which he had engaged with
years before, with an anti-universalistic approach
(Schmitt 1926). In The Nomos of the Earth
(Schmitt 1950) he gave a reinterpretation of the
relationship between Law and politics in the Mod-
ern age that combines the historical and the spatial
dimensions, further developing some older theses
(Schmitt 1942). Particularly, Schmitt suggested
that maritime political powers look at the world
as a smooth space, to be covered on the basis of
the principle of liberty and commerce, whereas
the continental powers are the bearer of a sense of
the border, of limit, of order.
The nomos is a “Measure” (it cannot be trans-
lated with “the law”) that is “right” not as a natural
right but just turning the original appropriation
and the division of the land into a juridical princi-
ple of order (Ordnung), that is also an orientation
and a localization (Ortung). The nomos is not
legality, but rather legitimacy; it is not a set of
international treatises, but rather the political-
juridical origin of the concrete orders of the
globe. Therefore, the nomos derives only margin-
ally from geopolitics: its meaning is a juridical-
political rather than a natural-geographical one.
Every time is characterized by a nomos of the
Earth; the modern age is grounded in the crisis of
the Medieval spatial order, the respublica
christiana, not only due to the civil wars of reli-
gion but also to a “spatial revolution.” In fact, the
discovery of America ushers in a void of order in
the historical scenario: the void space of the
Oceans, and the void space of the new continent,
appropriated and divided by the European pow-
ers. From the initial imbalance follows a reorga-
nization of the world space that improves through
different stages, from the tracing of amity lines in
sixteenth century up to the Treaty of Utrecht
(1713) and that continues up to the beginning of
the twentieth century. This nomos of the Earth, the
jus publicum europaeum, is based on the balance
between Land and Sea (between continental
States and England) and on the difference
between Europe and the rest of the world: that is
between the State and the non-State. In the
European spaces the “just war” of the Christian
Middle Ages turns itself in the “limited war,” a
military clash between States that recognize them-
selves reciprocally as justi hostes. In the
non-European spaces, on the contrary, there are
unlimited hostilities because the State does not
exist there.
The nomos is therefore the last conceptualiza-
tion of the “concrete Law,” which is paradoxical
in this case as well. Schmitt had demonstrated that
the exception explains the norm, and that the unity
of the State is based on the division produced by
decision; now he demonstrated that the modern
State system exists because outside Europe there
is the non-State. Colonies are central to the mod-
ern configuration of power rather than peripheral.
Schmitt, Carl
In Schmitt’s view, the crisis of the jus publicum
europaeum and of the related nomos of the Earth
is determined by the victory of the universalist
ideology of the Anglo-Saxon maritime powers
over the concrete pluralism of sovereignties, that
is, by the triumph of economics and techniques
over State-based politics. As a consequence of
universalism, the war as a right of sovereignty is
criminalized and the “just war” reemerges in the
moralistic and discriminatory form of the “inter-
national police” against the “rogue States”
(Schmitt 1938b). But the Eurocentric nomos has
not been substituted by a new order: Schmitt took
the world dualism between the East and the West
during the Cold War as a clash between two uni-
versalisms (capitalist liberalism and commu-
nism), none of which is able to produce a
concrete order (Schmitt 1951).
Conclusions
Schmitt’s interpretation of Law is realistic but not
positivistic, metaphysical, and, at the same time,
historical; the genetic role of the exception and the
drive toward form and order make Schmitt’s
thought both authoritarian and potentially revolu-
tionary. Schmitt’s scientific contribution lies spe-
cifically in his deep, genealogical gaze over the
legal systems; the risk it entails, highlighted by all
its critics, is occasionalism, that is the proposal of
a “situated Law,” which is contingent because is
radically permeated by history and politics.
Since the 1980s Schmitt is one of the most
studied, quoted, and translated authors all over
the world as a constitutional jurist and theoretician
of politics and international relations. Moreover,
many philosophers have dedicated attention to his
theory of Law, of Politics, and of History: among
others, Walter Benjamin, Leo Strauss, Hans
Blumenberg, Ernst Jünger, Erik Peterson, Jacob
Taubes, Alexandre Kojève, Reinhart Koselleck,
Jacques Derrida, Mario Tronti, Chantal Mouffe.
Schmitt was a brilliant and controversial
thinker; some scholars maintain that he should
be banned because of his support for Nazism, as
if this was the manifestation of the intrinsic irra-
tionality of his thought. The majority rejects his
7
anti-liberalism and anti-rationalism but acknowl-
edge that his thought needs to be studied for its
heuristic efficacy in detecting the inner aporias of
modern age. Yet others accept his teaching and
place him among the great thinkers of realism,
both in internal politics – where Schmitt is taken
to be able to grasp the fact that executives pre-
vailed over Parliaments, and to highlight the turn
toward securitarian policies – and in international
relations, where he is able to interpret the crisis of
universalism, and the pluralistic and conflictual
structuring of the world political stage.
Cross-References
▶ Critical Theory and International Law
▶ Hans Kelsen Political Obligation
▶ Law and Political Theology
▶ Leo Strauss
▶ Maurice Hauriou
▶ Rechtsstaat
References
Bendersky JW (1983) Carl Schmitt. Theorist for the Reich.
Princeton University Press, Princeton
Bueno R (2015) Carl Schmitt Hoje. Política, Direito e
Teologia. Max Limonad, São Paulo
Caldwell PC (1997) Popular sovereignty and the crisis of
German constitutional law. The theory and practice of
Weimar constitutionalism. Duke University Press,
Durham
Cristi R (1998) Carl Schmitt and authoritarian liberalism.
Strong state, free economy. University of Wales Press,
Cardiff
Croce M, Salvatore A (2013) The legal theory of Carl
Schmitt. Routledge, Abingdon
Dyzenhaus D (ed) (1998) Law as politics. Carl Schmitt’s
critique of liberalism. Duke University Press, Durham
Galli C (2015) Janus’s gaze. Essays on Carl Schmitt. Duke
University Press, Durham
Galli C (2018) Genealogía de la política. Carl Schmitt y la
crisis del pensamiento político moderno. UNIPE, Edi-
torial Universitaria, Buenos Aires
Hofmann H (2002) Legitimität gegen Legalität. Der Weg
der politische Philosophie Carl Schmitts. Duncker &
Humblot, Berlin
Hooker W (2009) Carl Schmitt’s international thought:
order and orientation. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge
8 Schmitt, Carl
Kalyvas A (2008) Democracy and the politics of the
extraordinary. Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah
Arendt. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Kaufmann M (1988) Recht ohne Regel? Die
philosophischen Prinzipien in Carl Schmitt’s Staats-
und Rechtslehre. Karl Alber, Freiburg
Kennedy E (2004) Constitutional failure. Carl Schmitt in
Weimar. Duke University Press, Durham
Kervégan J-F (2011) Que faire de Carl Schmitt? Gallimard,
Paris
Legg S (ed) (2011) Spatiality, Sovereignity and Carl
Schmitt: geographies of the nomos. Routledge,
New York
McCormick JP (1997) Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberalism.
Against politics as technology. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge
Mehring R (1989) Pathetisches Denken. Carl Schmitts
Denkweg am Leitfaden Hegels. Katholische
Grundstellung und antimarxistische Hegelstrategie.
Duncker & Humblot, Berlin
Mehring R (ed) (2003) Carl Schmitt “Der Begriff des
Politischen”. Ein kooperativer Kommentar. Akademie
Verlag, Berlin
Meierhenrich J, Simons O (eds) (2016) The Oxford hand-
book of Carl Schmitt. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Minca C, Rowan C (2014) On Schmitt and space.
Routledge, New York
Mouffe C (ed) (1999) The challenge of Carl Schmitt.
Verso, London
Odysseos L, Petito F (eds) (2007) The international polit-
ical thought of Carl Schmitt. Terror, liberal war and the
crisis of global order. Routledge, Abingdon
Quaritsch H (ed) (1988) Complexio oppositorum. Über
Carl Schmitt. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin
Scheuerman WE (1999) Carl Schmitt. The end of the law.
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Schmitt (1910) Über Schuld und Schuldarten. Eine
terminologische Untersuchung. Schletter, Breslau
Schmitt (1912) Gesetz und Urteil. Eine Untersuchung zum
Problem der Rechtspraxis (19953). Goldbach, Keip
Schmitt (1914) Der Wert des Staates und die Bedeutung
des Einzelnen. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 20043
Schmitt (1919) Politische Romantik (19282). Duncker &
Humblot, Berlin, 19986. English edition: Political
romanticism (trans: Oakes G). MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA, 1986
Schmitt (1921) Die Diktatur. Von den Anfängen des
modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum pro-
letarischen Klassenkampf (19282). Duncker &
Humblot, Berlin, 19946. English edition: Dictatorship.
From the origin of the modern concept of sovereignty
to proletarian class struggle (trans: Hoelzl M, Ward G).
Polity Press, Cambridge, 2014
Schmitt (1922) Politische Theologie. Vier Kapitel zur
Lehre von der Souveränität. Duncker & Humblot, Ber-
lin, 19977. English edition: Political theology. four
chapters on the concept of sovereignty (trans: Schwab
G). MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1985
Schmitt (1923a) Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des
heutigen Parlamentarismus (19252). Duncker &
Humblot, Berlin, 19968. English edition: The crisis of
parliamentary democracy (trans: Kennedy E). MIT
Press, Cambridge, MA, 1985
Schmitt (1923b) Römischer Katholizismus und politische
Form (19252). Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 19843. English
edition: Roman Catholizism and political form (trans:
Ulmen GL). Greenwood Press, Westport, 1996
Schmitt (1926) Die Kernfrage des Völkerbundes, in
Schmitt (2004) Frieden oder Pazifismus? Arbeiten
zum Völkerrecht und zur Internationalen Politik
1924–1978. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin.
Schmitt (1927) Volksentscheid und Volksbegehren. Ein
Beitrag zur Auslegung der Weimarer Verfassung und
zur Lehre von der unmittelbaren Demokratie,
Goldbach, Keip, 19972
Schmitt (1928) Verfassungslehre. Duncker & Humblot,
Berlin, 20039. English edition: Constitutional theory
(trans: Seitzer J). Duke University Press, Durham, 2008
Schmitt (1929b) Das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen und
Entpolitisierungen, Schmitt (1932b) Der Begriff des
Politischen (1927). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin,
200213. English edition: The concept of the political
(trans: Lomax JH). University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Schmitt (1931) Der Hüter der Verfassung. Duncker &
Humblot, Berlin, 19964
Schmitt (1932a) Legalität und Legitimität. Duncker &
Humblot, Berlin, 19986. English edition: Legality and
legitimacy (trans: Seitzer J). Duke University Press,
Durham, 2004
Schmitt (19323b) Der Begriff des Politischen (1927).
Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 200213. English edition:
The concept of the political (trans: Lomax JH). Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 2007
Schmitt (1933) Staat, Bewegung, Volk. Die Dreigliederung
der politischen Einheit. HanseatischeVerlagsanstalt,
Hamburg
Schmitt (1934) Über die drei Arten des
rechtswissenschaftlichen Denkens. Duncker &
Humblot, Berlin, 19932. English edition: On the three
types of juristic thought (trans: Bendersky JW). Praeger
Publishers, Westport, 2004
Schmitt (1938a) Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des
Thomas Hobbes. Sinn und Fehlschlag eines politischen
Symbols. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 19953. English edition:
The leviathan in the state theory of Thomas Hobbes:
meaning and failure of a political symbol (trans:
Schwab G, Hilfstein E). University of Chicago Press,
2008
Schmitt (1938b) Die Wendung zum diskriminierenden
Kriegsbegriff, in Schmitt 2004. English edition in
Schmitt (2011) Writings on war (trans: Nunan T).
Polity Press, Cambridge
Schmitt (1939) Völkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung mit
Interventionsverbot für raumfremde Mächte. Ein
Beitrag zum Reichsbegriff im Völkerrecht. Duncker
& Humblot, Berlin, 19915 (19424). English edition in
Schmitt 2011
Schmitt, Carl
Schmitt (1940) Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit
Weimar – Genf – Versailles, 1923–1939. Duncker &
Humblot, Berlin, 19943
Schmitt (1942) Land und Meer. Eine weltgeschichtliche
Betrachtung. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 20015. English edi-
tion: Land and sea. A world-historical meditation
(trans: Zeitlin SG). Telos Press Publishing, Candor,
2015
Schmitt (1944) Die Lage der europäischen
Rechtswissenschaft, in Schmitt (1958) Verfassungs-
rechtliche Aufsätze aus dem Jahren 1924–1954.
Materialien zu einer Verfassungslehre. Duncker &
Humblot, Berlin, 2003.
Schmitt (1950) Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des
Jus Publicum Europaeum. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin,
19974. English edition: The nomos of the earth in the
international law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum
(trans: Ulmen GL). Telos Press, New York, 2003
Schmitt (1951) Die Einheit der Welt, in Schmitt (2004)
Frieden oder Pazifismus? Arbeiten zum Völkerrecht
und zur Internationalen Politik 1924–1978. Duncker
& Humblot, Berlin.
Schmitt (1958) Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze aus dem
Jahren 1924–1954. Materialien zu einer
Verfassungslehre. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 20034
9
Schmitt (1963) Theorie des Partisanen. Zwischen-
bemerkung zum Begriff des Politischen. Duncker &
Humblot, Berlin, 20025; English edition: Theory of
the Partisan: intermediate commentary on the concept
of the political (trans: Ulmen GL). Telos Press,
New York, 2007
Schmitt (1965) Die vollendete Reformation: Bemerkungen
und Hinweise zu neuen Leviathan-. Interpretationen.
In: “Der Staat”, vol 1, pp 51–69
Schmitt (1995) Staat, Grossraum, Nomos. Arbeiten aus
den Jahren 1916–1969. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin
Schmitt (2004) Frieden oder Pazifismus? Arbeiten zum
Völkerrecht und zur Internationalen Politik
1924–1978. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin
Schmitt (2011) Writings on war (trans: Nunan T). Polity
Press, Cambridge
Schupmann R (2017) Carl Schmitt’s state and constitu-
tional theory. A critical analysis. Oxford University
Press, Oxford
Seitzer J (2001) Comparative history and legal theory. Carl
Schmitt in the first German democracy. Greenwood
Press, Westport