‘It is painful to speak of the Rhineland as an object of international politics.’ So began one of Carl Schmitt’s earliest published forays in the field of Völkerrecht, ‘The Rhineland as an Object of International Politics’.1 Originally a speech delivered on April 14, 1925 to commemorate the thousandth anniversary of the Rhineland, Schmitt’s admission of pain echoes the sentiments of humiliation and contempt experienced by German lawyers across the ideological spectrum during the post-war period of occupation.