Carl Schmitt's Early Legal-Theoretical Writings

The materials translated here provide the intellectual background to Carl Schmitt's political and constitutional theory. This book will be of interest to legal and constitutional theorists, political theorists and historians of political thought more generally, and it will be required reading for all scholars who work on Schmitt.

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Many of Carl Schmitt's major works have by now been translated, with two notable exceptions: Schmitt's two early monographs Statute and Judgment (first published in 1912) and The Value of the State and the Significance of the Individual (first published in 1914). In these two works Schmitt presents a theory of adjudication as well as an account of the state's role in the realization of the rule of law, which together form the theoretical basis on which Schmitt later developed his political and constitutional theory. This new book makes these two key texts available in English translation for the first time, together with an introduction that relates the texts to their historical context, to Schmitt's other works, and to contemporary discussions in legal and constitutional theory.