Can a constitutional democracy commit suicide? Can an illiberal antidemocratic party legitimately obtain power through democratic elections and amend liberalism and democracy out of the constitution entirely? In Weimar Germany, these theoretical questions were both practically and existentially relevant. By 1932, the Nazi and Communist parties combined held a majority of seats in parliament. Neither accepted the legitimacy of liberal democracy. Their only reason for participating democratically was to amend the constitution out of existence. This book analyses Carl Schmitt's state and constitutional theory and shows how it was conceived in response to the Weimar crisis. Right-wing and left-wing political extremists recognized that a path to legal revolution lay in the Weimar constitution's combination of democratic procedures, total neutrality toward political goals, and positive law. Schmitt's writings sought to address the unique problems posed by mass democracy. Schmitt's thought anticipated 'constrained' or 'militant' democracy, a type of constitution that guards against subversive expressions of popular sovereignty and whose mechanisms include the entrenchment of basic constitutional commitments and party bans. Schmitt's state and constitutional theory remains important: the problems he identified continue to exist within liberal democratic states. Schmitt offers democrats today a novel way to understand the legitimacy of liberal democracy and the limits of constitutional change.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Note on translations and references -- List of abbreviations -- 1 Introduction -- Schmitt and Derrida -- Constitutional theory -- Reading Schmitt -- Sequence and overview of chapters -- 2 The concept of the political -- A. Polémios -- Introduction -- Plato -- Schmitt -- Freud -- Heidegger -- The structure of the political -- B. Partisan -- Introduction -- Criteria -- The question of technology -- Philosophy and the Acheron -- The brother as double -- Woman as the absolute partisan -- Today's terror and the structure of the political -- C. Self -- Introduction -- Defining man: nakedness -- Stirner and his ego -- Modern technology -- Being-placed-in-question -- Self-deception -- Descartes and the self as enemy -- Hegel and the enemy -- Echo -- The concept of the political -- 3 Constituent power -- Introduction -- Political unity -- Political theology -- Fear and the Leviathan -- Demos without sovereignty -- Conclusion -- 4 Identity and representation -- Introduction -- The formation of identity -- Representation reconceived -- Conclusion -- 5 The concept of the constitution -- A. Khōra -- Introduction -- Derrida's reading of the Timaeus -- Khōra and the political -- Constitutions as giving place -- B. Crypt -- Introduction -- The Wolf Man -- The Wolf Man's crypt -- Constitution, memory and trauma -- 6 Human rights -- Introduction -- Freedom -- Equality -- Living together -- 7 State, Gro[beta]raum, nomos -- Introduction -- Nomos -- Man, space, nomos -- Conclusion -- 8 Conclusion -- Schmitt 'before' Derrida -- Derrida reading Schmitt -- Schmitt 'after' Derrida -- Bibliography -- Index

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

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

The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt collects thirty original chapters on the diverse oeuvre of one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Uniquely located at the intersection of law, the social sciences, and the humanities, it brings together sophisticated yet accessible interpretations of Schmitt's sprawling thought and complicated biography.

This book is a collection of contributions by leading scholars on theoretical and contemporary problems of militant democracy. The term 'militant democracy' was first coined in 1937. In a militant democracy preventive measures are aimed, at least in practice, at restricting people who would openly contest and challenge democratic institutions and fundamental preconditions of democracy like secularism - even though such persons act within the existing limits of, and rely on the rights offered by, democracy. In the shadow of the current wars on terrorism, which can also involve rights restrictions, the overlapping though distinct problem of militant democracy seems to be lost, notwithstanding its importance for emerging and established democracies. This volume will be of particular significance outside the German-speaking world, since the bulk of the relevant literature on militant democracy is in the German language. The book is of interest to academics in the field of law, political studies and constitutionalism.

Now available in English for the first time, Dictatorship is Carl Schmitt’s most scholarly book and arguably a paradigm for his entire work. Written shortly after the Russian Revolution and the First World War, Schmitt analyses the problem of the state of emergency and the power of the Reichspräsident in declaring it. Dictatorship, Schmitt argues, is a necessary legal institution in constitutional law and has been wrongly portrayed as just the arbitrary rule of a so-called dictator. Dictatorship is an essential book for understanding the work of Carl Schmitt and a major contribution to the modern theory of a democratic, constitutional state. And despite being written in the early part of the twentieth century, it speaks with remarkable prescience to our contemporary political concerns.