Carl schmitt's critique of liberal constitutionalism

Review of Politics

Volumn 58, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 299-322

  Scheuerman, William E ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34248129982     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670500019392     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. This is one flaw of the two major English-language studies of Schmitt: Joseph Bendersky, Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich (Princeton: Princeton University, 1983);
2. George Schwab, The Challenge of the Exception: An Introduction to the Ideas of Carl Schmitt (New York: Greenwood, 1989). I also believe that these two works are apologetic in their treatments of Schmitt's relationship to the Nazis.
3. See my: "The Fascism of Carl Schmitt: A Response to George Schwab," German Politics arid Society 29 (1993).
4. For one notable exception to the widespread tendency to underplay Schmitt's legal concerns: Rune Slagstad, "Liberal Constitutionalism and its Critics: Carl Schmitt and Max Weber," in Constitutionalism and Its Critics, ed. Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
5. 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: Ingeborg Maus, Biirgerliche Rechtstheorie und Faschismus. Zur sozialen Funktion und aktuellen Wirkung der Theorie Carl Schmitts (Munich: Wilhelm Fink: 1976).
6. For a survey of the German literature: Reinhard Mehring, "Carl Schmitts Lehre von der Auflosung des Liberalismus: Das Sinngefuge der Verfassungslehre als historisches Urteil," Zeitschrift fur Politik 38 (1991);
7. Mehring, "Vom Umgang mit Carl Schmitt. Zur neueren Literatur," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 19 (1993): esp. 399-404
8. Ulrich Preufi, "Der Begriff der Verfassung und ihre Beziehung zur Politik" in Zum Begriff der Verfassung. Die Ordnung des Politischen, ed. Preufi (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1994), p. 10.
9. Also: Preufi, "Constitutional Powermaking for the New Polity: Some Deliberations on the Relations Between Constituent Power and the Constitution," Cardozo Law Review 14 (1993): 649.
10. 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: Bonnie Honig, "Declarations on Independence: Arendt and Derrida on the Problem of Founding a Republic," American Political Science Review 85 (1991).
11. In this vein, also: Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (New York: Verso, 1993).
12. For a fine critical discussion of these trends: Seyla Benhabib, "Democracy and Difference: Reflections on the Metapolitics of Lyotard and Derrida," Journal of Political Philosophy 2 (1994).
13. Leo Strauss, "Comments on Carl Schmitt's Begriffdes Politischen," in Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (New Brunswick: Rutgers University, 1976), p. 105.
14. Carl Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre (Munich: Duncker and Humblot, 1928), p. 9. Die Verfassungslehre is the centerpiece of Schmitt's jurisprudence; thus, my emphasis on it here.
15. But Schmitf s Weimar-era ideas on constitutional government are also developed in a series of further texts as well: Der Hiiter der Verfassung (Tubingen: Mohr, 1931);
16. Legalitat und Legitimitat (Munich: Duncker and Humblot, 1932);
17. Verfassungrechtliche Aufsatze aus den Jahren 1924-1954 (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1973).
18. On the role of the concept of the generality of law in liberal legal thinking: Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, pp. 138-157
19. For Schmitt's most important polemic against nonclassical forms of law: Unabhangigkeit der Richter, Gleichheit vor dem Gesetz, und Gewahrleisting des Privateigentums nach der Weimarer Verfassung (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1926). Schmitt's 1920s writings often echo the concerns of contemporary liberals anxious about the administrative state.
20. 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, Legalitat und Legitimist, as well as his Uber die drei Arten des rechtswissenschaftlichen Denkens (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934).
21. 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).
22. Hans Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre (Darmstadt: Scientia Verlag, 1985), p. 64.
23. Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, p. 9.
24. Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, 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.
25. Ibid., p. 11.
26. 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. 26-28).
27. Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, pp. 11-36. At first glance, Schmitt's argument here seems persuasive. Many contemporary commentators (for example, Bendersky and Schwab) have praised Schmitt on this point.
28. 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 CSchmitt, Legalitat und Legitimist, pp. 87, 96-98).
29. Schmitt, Die Verfassungstheorie, p. 8.
30. Schmitt, Die Verfassungstheorie, Ibid., p. 50.
31. Schmitt, Concept of the Political, p. 27. 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.
32. As Preufi 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" (Preufi, "Constitutional Powermaking for the New Polity," p. 650).
33. Schmitt, Concept of the Political, p. 27.
34. Schmitt, Der Hitter der Verfassung; for Kelsen's reply: Wer soil der Hitter der Verfassung sein? (Berlin: Rothschild, 1931). The existential foe can very well be a domestic political opponent.
35. For an excellent account of this matter: David Dyzenhaus, Truth's Revenge: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, and Hermann Heller in Weimar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
36. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, trans. George Schwab (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), p. 28.
37. Schmitt, Die Verfassungstheorie, p. 87.
38. Schmitt, Die Verfassungstheorie, Ibid., p. 87
39. 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, 87).
40. For a perceptive early criticism of this aspect of Schmitt's theory: Erich Voegelin, "Die Verfassungslehre von Carl Schmitt," Zeitschrift fur offentliches Recht 11 (1931). 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.
41. Carl Schmitt, Die Verfassungstheorie, pp. 20-36. "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"
42. (Franz L. Neumann, The Democratic and Authoritarian State [New York: Free Press, 1957], pp. 53-54).
43. Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, pp. 56-60.
44. 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. 78-79).
45. For Arendt's view: On Revolution (New York: Penguin, 1963).
46. 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)
47. 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. 22-32. As we will see, the principle of popular sovereignty is reformulated in a highly idiosyncratic manner in his theory.
48. Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 66.
49. For a thoughtful criticism of Schmitt's reinterpretation of Sieyes: Stefan Breuer, "Nationalstaat und pouvoir constituant bei Sieyes und Carl Schmitt," Archivfur Rechts-und Sozialphilosophie 70 (1984).
50. Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, p. 79.
51. Also: Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur (Leipzig: Dunker and Humblot, 1928), pp. 140-143
52. Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, p. 77.
53. Richard Fuchs, "Carl Schmitts Verfassungslehre," Juristische Wochenschrift 60 (1931): 1661.
54. Rousseau, The Social Contract, III. 12-13.
55. Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, p. 315.
56. Schmitt, Legalitat und Legitimist, p. 93.
57. This is the key argument of Legalitat und Legitimist. 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: Otto Koellreutter, "Volk und Staat in der Verfassungskrise. Zugleich eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Verfassungslehre Carl Schmitts," in Zum Neubau der Verfnssung, ed. Fritz Berber (Berlin: Junker and Dunnhaupt, 1933).
58. Otto Kirchheimer, Politics, Law and Social Change (New York: Columbia University, 1969), p. 78.
59. For a discussion of Dworkin in this context: David Dyzenhaus, "'Now the Machine Runs Itself': Carl Schmitt on Hobbes and Kelsen" Cardozo Law Review 16 (1994).
60. For a recent discussion of this issue: Stephen Holmes, "Precommitment and the Paradox of Democracy," in Elster and Slagstad, Constitutionalism and Democracy.
61. The Weimar theorist Hermann Heller makes this observation in his brilliant but unfairly forgotten Die Souveranitat (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927).
62. For an excellent discussion of Heller's theory and its relationship to the ideas of Kelsen and Schmitt: Wolfgang Schluchter, Entscheidungfiir den sozialen Rechtsstaat. Hermann Heller und die staatstheoretische Diskussion in der Weimarer Republik (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1983).
63. Other Weimar-era writers also saw Kelsen's positivism as complicit in Schmitf 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 dedsionism, for the acceptance of political decisions no matter where they originate or what their content, so long as suf firient power stands behind them" (Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism [New York: Harper and Row, 1965], p. 47).
64. Much of the literature sympathetic to Schmitt misses this: see Schwab, Challenge to the Exception;
65. Bendersky, Carl Schmitt.
66. For one recent interpretation of Schmitt that focusses on his hostility to universalistic elements of liberalism: Matthias Kaufmann, Recht ohne Regel? Die philosophbchen Prinzipien in Carl Schmitts Staatstheorie (Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1988).
67. 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).
68. 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.
69. Unabhangigkeit der Richter, Gleichheit vor dent Gesetz und Gewiihrleistung des Privateigentums nach der Weimarer Verfassung, p. 23.
70. Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, p. 154. 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 Unabhiingigkeit der Richter, Gleichheit vor dem Gesetz und Gewahrleistung 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).
71. Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 21
72. As Dyzenhaus rightly notes, Schmitt considers "Kelsen's restatement of legal positivism . . . 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.
73. Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 21.
74. 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. Ernst Fraenkel, ed., Der Staatsnotstand (Berlin: Colloquium, 1964).
75. Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, pp. 9-10.
76. 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: Stanley Paulson, "Kelsen's Legal Theory: The Final Round," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 12 (1992).
77. Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, p. 76.
78. Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 66. 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.
79. On democracy and value-relativism: Hans Kelsen, Wesen und Wert der Demokratie (Tubingen: Mohr, 1929).
80. Max Weber, Economy and Society, vol.1 (Berkeley: University of California, 1979), p. 4.
81. See also: Hermann Heller, "Staat," inHandwb'rterbuch der Soziologie (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1955).
82. On Schmitt's relationship to National Socialist law: Bernd Riithers, Entartetes Recht. Rechtslehren und Kronjuristen im Dritten Reich (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988).
83. Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, pp. 24-25.
84. Schmitt, Die Verfassungslehre, Ibid., p. 253