TITLE:
Carl Schmitt’s Turn to Sovereignty in Jurisprudence
AUTHORS:
Douglas Howland
KEYWORDS:
Authority of Law, Decisionism, Juristic Thought, Sovereign Jurisprudence
JOURNAL NAME:
Beijing Law Review,
Vol.9 No.2,
June
7,
2018
ABSTRACT: Carl Schmitt’s early
proposal to better unify the liberal state, by locating sovereignty in the
executive, proved a disaster with the National Socialist regime. But
sovereignty concerns a state’s internal as well as international relations, and
Schmitt came to argue in the 1940s that an authoritative and sovereign form of
international law might offer standards for unifying states within an
international community, much as the Catholic Church once provided an
intra-state source of law and authority. Unlike recent work that emphasizes Nomos, Großraum, or “institutional thinking,” this essay argues that
Schmitt sought such a sovereign jurisprudence in the decisions of judges
and justified it with the conservative claims of historical continuity.