1 See Posner, EA, The Perils of Global Legalism (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2009)Google Scholar; Goldsmith, JL and Posner, EA, The Limits of International Law (Oxford University Press, New York, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Posner’s scepticism about international legality echoes the Austinian view that legality, to be effective, requires enforcement by a sovereign power, and that international law must therefore fail to be more than a form of ‘positive morality’. See Austin, J, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, edited by Rumble, WE (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995) 123–5Google Scholar, 171. Some authors instead accentuate the normative claim that subjection to international law would be incompatible with popular sovereignty. See Kahn, PW, Political Theology. Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Columbia University Press, New York, 2011) 31–90Google Scholar; Rabkin, JA, Law Without Nations? Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2007)Google Scholar; Rubenfeld, J, ‘Unilateralism and Constitutionalism’ (2004) 79 New York University Law Review 1971–2028.Google Scholar

2 See also Goldsmith, J and Levinson, D, ‘Law for States: International Law, Constitutional Law, Public Law’ (2009) 122 Harvard Law Review 1791–868.Google Scholar

3 Schmitt was one of the intellectual precursors of modern ‘realism’ in international relations theory. See Scheuerman, WE, Carl Schmitt: The End of Law (Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 1999) 225–51.Google Scholar

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5 For example Schmitt, C, ‘Völkerrechtliche Formen des modernen Imperialismus’ in Schmitt, C, Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar – Genf – Versailles 1923–1939 (Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1988) 190Google Scholar: ‘International law, just like constitutional law, is unavoidably political law.’

6 Schmitt, C, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, translated by Schwab, G (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005) 13Google Scholar: ‘Every general norm demands a normal, everyday frame of life to which it can be factually applied and which is subjected to its regulations. The norm requires a homogeneous medium. This effective normal situation is not a mere “superficial presupposition” that a jurist can ignore; that situation belongs precisely to its immanent validity. There exists no norm that is applicable to a chaos. For a legal order to make sense, a normal situation must exist, and he is sovereign who definitely decides whether this normal situation exists.’

7 See for Schmitt’s concept of indirect rule Schmitt, C, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol, translated by Schwab, G (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2008) 65–78.Google Scholar

8 Kelsen, H, ‘Wesen und Entwicklung der Staatsgerichtsbarkeit’ in Klecatsky, H, Marcić, R and Schambeck, H (eds), Die Wiener rechtstheoretische Schule. Ausgewählte Schriften von Hans Kelsen, Adolf Julius Merkl und Alfred Verdross, vol II (Europa Verlag, Vienna, 1968) 1813–72.Google Scholar

9 Schmitt, C, Der Hüter der Verfassung (Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1931) 22.Google Scholar

10 Ibid, 22.

11 Schmitt expressed strong reservations concerning constitutional review in his 1928 Verfassungslehre. See Schmitt, C, Constitutional Theory, translated and edited by Seitzer, Jeffrey (Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2008) 163–4Google Scholar. In 1929, Schmitt criticized the Weimar Reichsgericht for calling itself a guardian of the constitution and for claiming the power to exercise a limited form of judicial review. See Schmitt, C, ‘Das Reichsgericht als Hüter der Verfassung’ in Schmitt, C, Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1924–1954. Materialien zu einer Verfassungslehre (Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1958) 63–100Google Scholar. When this paper was reprinted in 1958, Schmitt added a comment attacking the Bundesverfassungsgericht for not being deferential enough to the legislator (ibid, 105–9). In 1967, Schmitt went so far as to compare the judicial enforcement of substantive constitutional values in postwar West Germany to the eliminative violence of the Nazis. See Schmitt, C, Die Tyrannei der Werte (3rd edn, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 2011) 51–5Google Scholar. For a more complete list of Schmitt’s attacks on judicial review see Hofmann, H, Legitimität gegen Legalität. Der Weg der polischen Philosophie Carl Schmitts (4th edn, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 2002) 33Google Scholar, fn 165.

12 See for a short overview Mommsen, H, Aufstieg und Untergang der Republik von Weimar (Ullstein, Berlin, 2009) 536–48Google Scholar. For discussion of the constitutional issue and the decision of the Staatsgerichtshof see Dyzenhaus, D, Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen and Hermann Heller in Weimar (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997) 28–37.Google Scholar

13 Seiberth, G, Anwalt des Reiches. Carl Schmitt und der Prozess ‘Preussen contra Reich’ vor dem Staatsgerichtshof (Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 2001).Google Scholar

14 C Schmitt, ‘Schlußrede vor dem Staatsgerichtshof in Leipzig’ in Schmitt, Positionen und Begriffe (n 5) 208–9.

15 Kelsen, H, ‘Das Urteil des Staatsgerichtshofs vom 25. Oktober 1932’ (1932) 8 Die Justiz 65–91.Google Scholar

16 Kelsen, ‘Wer soll der Hüter der Verfassung sein?’ in Die Wiener rechtstheoretische Schule (n 8) 1882–4.

17 Schmitt, C, Staatsgefüge und Zusammenbruch des zweiten Reiches. Der Sieg des Bürgers über den Soldaten, edited by Maschke, G (Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 2011) 44–7.Google Scholar

18 Ibid, 45.

19 Schmitt, Der Hüter der Verfassung (n 9) 19, 22–48 and Schmitt, ‘Das Reichsgericht als Hüter der Verfassung’ (n 11) 73–89.

20 Schmitt, C, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition, translated by Schwab, G (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2007) 25–37.Google Scholar

21 Ibid, 45–53.

22 Ibid, 37–45.

23 Ibid, 27: Political conflicts ‘can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party’. Schwab’s translation omits scare quotes in the German original around ‘disinterested’ and ‘neutral’. Schmitt does not say that political conflicts cannot be decided by third parties even if they are disinterested and neutral. He suggests, rather, that there are can be no neutral or disinterested parties in truly political conflicts.

24 Schmitt, Constitutional Theory (n 11) 140–6.

25 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (n 20) 46–7. Schmitt had argued as early as 1921 that the condition of normality upon which a liberal constitution must be created through exercises of sovereign dictatorship. See Schmitt, C, Die Diktatur. Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (2nd edn, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1928).Google Scholar

26 Schmitt, Political Theology (n 6).

27 Schmitt, Constitutional Theory (n 11) 67–74.

28 Ibid, 75–88.

29 Ibid, 77–8.

30 Ibid, 148–58.

31 Schmitt, Der Hüter der Verfassung (n 9) 132–59. See also C Schmitt, ‘Die Diktatur des Reichspräsidenten nach Art. 48 der Weimarer Verfassung’, in Schmitt, Die Diktatur (n 25) 211–57 and Schmitt, C, Legality and Legitimacy, translated by Seitzer, Jeffrey (Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2004) 67–83.Google Scholar

32 See Waldron, J, Law and Disagreement (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar; Waldron, J, ‘The Core of the Case for Judicial Review’ (2006) 115 Yale Law Journal 1346–406Google Scholar; Bellamy, R, Political Constitutionalism: A Republican Defence of the Constitutionality of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Schmitt, Der Hüter der Verfassung (n 9) 12–48.

34 For this reason, Schmitt tried to contain the claim of the Weimar Reichsgericht to be a ‘guardian of the constitution’ as far as possible. See Schmitt, ‘Das Reichsgericht als Hüter der Verfassung’ (n 11).

35 Schmitt, Political Theology (n 6) 30–1.

36 Schmitt, Der Hüter der Verfassung (n 9) 37–8. See also Schmitt, Constitutional Theory (n 11) 169–96.

37 See Wolff, RP, In Defense of Anarchism (University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1998) 3–19Google Scholar; Raz, Joseph, The Authority of Law (2nd edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009) 3–27.Google Scholar

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40 C Schmitt, Legality and Legitimacy (n 31) 3–26.

41 Schmitt, C, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, translated by Kennedy, E (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1988) 1–50Google Scholar; Schmitt, Constitutional Theory (n 11) 328–42; Schmitt, Legality and Legitimacy (n 31) 27–36.

42 Schmitt, ‘Die Diktatur des Reichspräsidenten’ (n 31).

43 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (n 20) 46–7.

44 Schmitt repeatedly expressed his agreement with Hobbes’s claim that the state’s claim to obedience is conditional on the offer of protection. Hence, he would surely have agreed with the view that a declared enemy of the state cannot owe a duty of obedience to the state. See, for instance, Schmitt ibid 52.

45 Debate among post-Hartian legal theorists is typically concerned with the question what judges do when they decide ‘hard cases’, whether they legislate or, in some sense, apply a higher law, not with the question whether hard cases can legitimately be decided by courts. Positivists and natural law theorists agree that they can.

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50 Ibid, 84.

51 Schmitt, Constitutional Theory (n 11) 381–95.

52 Ibid, 383.

53 Ibid, 388–95.

54 Schmitt, Die Kernfrage des Völkerbundes (n 47) 127–8.

55 Ibid, 86–7, 115–26.

56 Schmitt, Die Kernfrage des Völkerbundes (n 47) 98–114.

57 For instance, Keynes, JM, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (Harcourt, Brace and Howe, New York, 1920) 140–1.Google Scholar

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62 Ibid, 76, 138.

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68 Williams, JF, ‘Sanctions Under the Covenant’ (1936) 17 British Yearbook of International Law 130–49Google Scholar; McNair, AD, ‘Collective Security’ (1936) 17 British Yearbook of International Law 150–64.Google Scholar

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71 C Schmitt, The Großraum Order of International Law with a Ban on Intervention for Spatially Foreign Powers: A Contribution to the Concept of Reich in International Law in Schmitt, Writings on War (n 48) 75–124. Schmitt’s position after 1945 was to claim that the new ‘nomos of the earth’ was yet to come, and to denigrate the postwar political order as a ‘global civil war’. The Second World War, in other words, had unfortunately been won by the wrong people.

72 Cassesse, International Law (n 60) 55–9.

73 See arts 12–17 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.

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78 See Goldsmith and Levinson, ‘Law for States’ (n 2). Schmitt’s opponent Hans Kelsen concurred with the view that constitutional and international law are analogous. See Kelsen, ‘Wesen und Entwicklung der Staatsgerichtsbarkeit’ (n 8) 1862–64.

79 This was Kelsen’s perspective on the analogy of constitutional and international law. See Vinx, L, Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law. Legality and Legitimacy (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007) 176–207Google Scholar; von Bernstorff, J, The Public International Law Theory of Hans Kelsen. Believing in Universal Law, translated by Dunlap, T (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010).Google Scholar

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