Carl Schimitt's Nomos of The Earth - Mark Antaki
Carl Schimitt's Nomos of The Earth - Mark Antaki
Carl Schimitt's Nomos of The Earth - Mark Antaki
Article 5
Volume 42, Number 2 (Summer 2004)
Citation Information
Antaki, Mark. "Carl Schmitt's Nomos of the Earth." Osgoode Hall Law Journal 42.2 (2004) : 317-334.
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REVIEW ESSAY
CARL SCHMITT'S NOMOS OF THE EARTH
BY MARK ANTAKI2
[The Nomnos].
2 Assistant Professor, McGill University (Faculty of Law). The author would like to thank David
Bates, Bogdan Iancu, an anonymous reviewer, and the assigned editor for their comments.
See George Schwab, The Challengeof the Exception: An Introduction to the PoliticalIdeas
of Carl
Schmitt between 1921 and 1936 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1970); Joseph W. Bendersky, CarlSchmitt,
Theorist of the Reich (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).
4The following two titles are largely representative of the contemporary engagement
with Schmitt:
David Dyzenhaus, ed., Law as Politics.Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism (Durham, Duke University
Press, 1998); John P. McCormick, Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997).
For a discussion of the reduction of Schmitt's overall thought to his involvement with
the
National Socialists as an "abuse" of Schmitt, see Paul Piccone & G. L. Ulmen, "Uses and Abuses of Carl
Schmitt" (2002) 122 Telos 3 [footnotes omitted]. Among other things, Piccone and Ulmen point out that
"Schmitt opposed both the communist and Nazi parties during the Weimar Republic" (ibid. at 16). For
an intellectual biography of Schmitt, see Gopal Balakrishnan, The Enemy:An IntellectualPortraitofCarl
Schmitt (London: Verso, 2000). See text accompanying note 12.
OSGOODE HALL LAW JOURNAL [VOL. 42, No. 2
6 See Carl Schmitt, La dictature,trans. by Mira K611er & Dominique S6glard (Paris: Seuil, 2000);
Carl Schmitt, Thdorie de la Constitution, trans. by Lilyane Deroche (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1993); Carl Schmitt, Les trois types depensjejuridique(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1995) [Schmitt, Les troistypes]; and Carl Schmitt, La Notion du Politique et La Thiorie du Partisan,trans.
by Marie-Louise Steinhauser (Paris: Flammarion, 1972). See also Carl Schmitt, Le Nomos de la terre
dans le droit des gens du jus publicum europaeum, trans. by Lilyane Deroche-Gurcel (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 2001), the translation of the work that this article is about [Schmitt, Le Nomos
de la terre].
7 See Carl Schmitt, PoliticalTheology: FourChapterson the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. by George
Schwab (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985) [Schmitt, PoliticalTheology]; Carl Schmitt & G. L. Ulmen,
Roman Catholicism and PoliticalForm, trans. by G. L. Ulmen (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1996); Carl Schmitt, PoliticalRomanticism, trans. by Guy Oakes (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986);
and Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political,trans. by George Schwab (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers
University Press, 1976) [Schmitt, The Concept]. See also Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary
Democracy,trans. by Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985); Carl Schmitt, The Leviathan
in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol, trans. by George
Schwab & Erna Hilfstein (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996) [Schmitt, The Leviathan].
20041 Review Essay 319
has translated several of Schmitt's pieces for Telos. Further, Telos has
devoted two special issues to Schmitt. 8 The treatment of Schmitt in the
pages of Telos can be distinguished from much of that in the mainstream
press, academic and non-academic, where Schmitt tends to be reviled 9 or
dismissed.
The interest in reading Schmitt goes beyond the perceived need to
defend liberalism against one of its most formidable foes"0 or beyond the
utility of turning to Schmitt to reinvigorate the left or post-left. Far beyond
the need to buttress contemporary political positions, Schmitt is worth
turning to because of the manner in which he points to foundational issues
of law and politics and can be helpful, along with thinkers such as Hannah
Arendt, in the construction of a properly phenomenological account of
politics and law."1 In addition, Der Nomos der Erde raises timely questions
regarding international law. Though these questions are timely from a
practical perspective they may also be untimely-and unsettling to the spirit
of the age.
Schmitt's turn to international law began after 1936,12 before which
he had devoted himself mostly to domestic public law. Nevertheless, this
turn to international law did not constitute a break in his thought. First, and
as we shall see further below, the notion of a sharp separation of domestic
law and international law was not one to which Schmitt subscribed. He
believed that adherence to this sharp separation belonged to an
intellectually sterile positivism that abstracted law from its concrete
historical context. Second, there is a true continuity in themes from his
Weimar-era writings to his international law writings." In his turn to
international law, Schmitt furthered the critique of normativism and
positivism that he had begun in the Weimar era. Finally, in such writings as
8 Special Issue on Carl Schmitt (1987) 72 Telos; Carl Schmitt Now (1996) 109
Telos.
9 See e.g. Jeffrey Herf, ReactionaryModernism: Technology, Culture, andPolitics in Weimar and
the
Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Richard Wolin, "Carl Schmitt: The
Conservative Revolution and the Aesthetics of Horror" (1993) 20 Pol. Theory 424.
10 On the "foe," see G.L. Ulmen, "Return of the Foe" (1987) 72 Telos 187; George Schwab,
"Enemy or Foe: A Conflict of Modern Politics" (1987) 72 Telos 194; and the discussion of "the enemy"
below. The foe is not a just enemy against whom a limited war is fought but an absolute enemy against
whom a total war is fought.
11 See also Julien Freund, L'essence dupolitique (Paris: Sirey, 1965). Freund was a student of both
Schmitt and Raymond Aron.
12 The year 1936 marked the end of Schmitt's close association with National Socialism. See
especially Bendersky, supra note 3 at c. 11; Balakrishnan, supra note 5 at c. 15.
13 Note the title of Carl Schmitt, Positionen und Begriffe im Kampfmit Weimar-Genf-Versailles
1923-1939 (Berlin: Duncher & Humblot, 1988).
OSGOODE HALL LAW JOURNAL [VOL. 42, NO. 2
The Concept of the Political, one can already see a serious and marked
concern with international law and with the changing legal status of war
(evident in, for example, Germany's postwar treatment in the Versailles
treaty).
Schmitt's Weimar-era writings reflect the concrete crisis with which
Germany was faced. As with many-if not most-of his writings, they are
polemical in nature, attacking rival understandings of law such as Hans
Kelsen's normativism. At the time, Schmitt's critique pointed to the
Weimar Republic's inability to respond to its internal enemies. Schmitt
understood this inability as an evasion of the political. Indeed, before his
turn to National Socialism, Schmitt had tried to save the Weimar Republic
by arguing for a broad interpretation of the Weimar Constitution's
emergency provision (Article 48). He had also argued that parties seeking
to subvert the constitution (that is the Communists and National Socialists)
ought not be allowed to seize control by legal means.' 4 In these arguments,
Schmitt called for a strong federal executive and perhaps, despite his
misgivings about liberalism, for something like a "political liberalism."' 5
The (liberal) evasion of the political, of the need to make difficult
decisions involving emergencies and the identification of enemies, is a
recurrent theme in Schmitt's writings. Liberalism, Schmitt explains, has no
account of the political, but rather attempts in vain to escape the political.
In its denial of the political, liberalism denies the dangerousness of human
beings. 16 It also misapprehends the nature of law, forgetting that law is a
concrete phenomenon rooted in a political order that needs to be defended
and secured in the face of emergencies and enemies. Liberalism, with its
liberal "neutrality," as exemplified in the Weimar Republic, avoids making
demanding decisions. Rather, liberalism elides the conflictual character of
politics and attempts "to transform the enemy from the viewpoint of
economics into a competitor and from the intellectual point into a debating
adversary."' 7 Liberalism systematically evades the political and "moves
instead in a typical always recurring polarity of two heterogeneous spheres,
14 See e.g. Carl Schmitt, Legalitit und Legitimitat (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, 1932). Legalitat
und Legitimitithas been translated into French in A. de Benoist, ed., Du Politique "L~galitget ligitimitg"
et autres essais (Puiseaux: Pard~s, 1990). See also David Dyzenhaus, "Legal Theory in the Collapse of
Weimar: Contemporary Lessons?" (1997) 91 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 121.
15 It can be argued that actual developments in liberal states answered Schmitt's call. However,
whether contemporary accounts of "political liberalism" deal adequately with Schmitt's critique is
another question. See e.g. David Dyzenhaus, "Liberalism after the Fall: Schmitt, Rawls and the Problem
of Justification" (1996) 22 Phil. & Soc. Criticism 9.
16 Schmitt, The Concept, supra note 7 at 58ff.
17
1bid. at 28.
2004] Review Essay
namely ethics
'8
and economics, intellect and trade, education and
property.'
On the one hand, as we have seen in the example of the Weimar
Republic, the failure of a state to acknowledge the political can lead to its
demise. On the other hand, a purported evasion of the political can itself
constitute a political strategy or mode of being. The turn to ostensibly
"neutral" spheres 9 such as the market and abstract morality (including
moral categories such as "humanity") can be a potent political means by
which one discredits and defeats one's enemies.2 0 Schmitt locates such a
turn in the criminalization of war and in Germany's treatment at Versailles.
Though Schmitt and others trace the rise of this dangerous moralism in
politics to the French Revolution, it was only in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries that this moralism in politics achieved a position of dominance,
speeding along the dissolution of the only truly global international order
the world had known: the juspublicum europaeum.
Der Nomos der Erde tells the story of this first truly global
international legal order. It tells of the emergence of the jus publicum
europaeum (public law of Europe) out of the dissolution of the respublica
Christiana2 ' and of its own dissolution into an abstract and universal
international law in which war is deemed criminal in theory but not
necessarily avoided or limited in practice. Schmitt does not simply lament
the passing of the jus publicum europaeum but wonders about its
successor-a successor which would have to fulfill the function of any
proper international legal order: the limitation of war by way of the
recognition of ajustus hostis (just enemy).
The English translation of the book is divided into five parts. Part
I, "Five Introductory Corollaries," sets the tone for the book by introducing
and explicating key words while also providing a brief account of the
respublica Christiana out of which the jus publicum europaeum emerged.
Part II, "Land Appropriation of a New World," tells of the birth of thejus
publicum europaeum out of the "discovery" of the new world. Part III, "The
Jus Publicum Europaeum," tells of the era and accomplishments of thejus
18
Ibid. at 70.
19 On neutralization see also Carl Schmitt, "The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations"
(1993) 96 Telos 130.
20 This theme is present in Schmitt, The Concept, supra note 7. See also Reinhart Koselleck,
CritiqueandCrisis:Enlightenmentandthe PathogenesisofModern Society (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1988), which should be read alongside the work of Schmitt.
21 Schmitt understands the respublica Christiana as the unity of Christendom in Europe, under the
power of the Holy Roman Emperor and the authority of the Pope. It lasted roughly until the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries.
OSGOODE HALL LAW JOURNAL [VOL. 42, NO. 2
Along with themis, dike, and ethos, nomos is one of the great
Ancient Greek words for law. The root verb of nomos is nemein, which
means to distribute and also to pasture, or to graze. Nomos carries within
it the sense of moira,which, though commonly translated as fate or destiny,
signifies the granting to each being of its own share. Nomos points to the
primordial truth that each being is allotted its own place. It is for both its
richness and concreteness that Schmitt chooses the word nomos to speak
of a legal order. Listening to the word carefully points to the way Schmitt
understands law as well as to his understanding of several other key words
in his account of the international legal order.
In nomos, Schmitt hears the succession of appropriation (nehmen
or taking), distribution (teilen or division), and production (weiden or
pasturage). 22 It is crucial for Schmitt that nomos has an inescapable (though
sometimes forgotten) concrete and spatial character. As opposed to the
characterization of law as mere norms or oughts (to which Schmitt refers
as normativism and links to positivism), nomos designates the belonging
together of place and law, of is and ought. Thus, Schmitt writes of law as "a
unity of order and orientation ' '23 (Einheitvon Ordnungund Ortung). Noting
the connection between utopia-no place-and nihilism, Schmitt remarks
that, "only a conclusive and fundamental separation of order and
orientation can be called 'nihilism' in an historically specific sense."' 4
Schmitt believes contemporary times are characterized by such a nihilism
and lack a true nomos. Much of his critique of contemporary juridical
thinking is aimed at the way norms are understood in abstraction from the
concrete orders to which they necessarily belong. Norms without a nomos
do not constitute law proper. Laws cannot be understood as mere oughts
detached from time and place.
As Schmitt explains in Political Theology, "[a]ll law is 'situational
22 See especially the first concluding corollary, The Nomos, supra note 1 at 324.
23 Ibid. at 42.
24
Ibid. at 66.
2004] Review Essay
27 It is worthwhile to read Carl Schmitt's Die Diktatur(Berlin: Duneker & Humblot, 1921) and
PoliticalTheology, supra note 7, together. As mentioned above, Die Diktatur has been translated into
French but not English. See supra note 6 and accompanying text.
28 The Nomos, supra note 1 at 80.
29 Ibid. at 46.
30
Ibid. at 81.
31 See Hans Kelsen, Pure Theory of Law, trans. by Max Knight (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1967).
OSGOODE HALL LAW JOURNAL [VOL. 42, NO. 2
public sign of order."32 Nevertheless, the sea also plays a crucial role in
Schmitt's account. The circumnavigation of the globe led to a great sea-
appropriation and the first global legal order. Further, the contrast of land
and sea33 points to different ways in which law and even human polities are
and hence can be understood. Thus, the global order that was the jus
publicum europaeum was actually comprised of the relation between two
spatial orders: one of firm land and one of free sea. England was of-but
not in-Europe, and connected the two.
All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological
concepts not only because of their historical development-in which they were transferred
from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became
the omnipotent lawgiver-but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of
which is necessary for a sociological consideration 39of these concepts. The exception in
jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology.
state."45
The state's fragile location in time between the respublica Christiana
and the later technical age mirrors the way in which Schmitt the jurist
conceived of his element, jurisprudence. In a work that he considered his
"testament" 46 Schmitt explains that jurisprudence "has always been
determined by two great oppositions: on the one side, to theology,
metaphysics and philosophy; on the other, to mere technical craft. ' 47 In the
sixteenth century, jurisprudence had to oppose theology. But "[n]ow [in the
twentieth century] jurisprudence must take a stand against the other side":
the instrumentalization of law and state.48
The central achievement of the jus publicum europaeum was the
state. From the foregoing, it should be clear that the "state" is not to be
understood as a general way of referring to human polities but, rather, as
a concrete and historically bounded achievement of European
humanity-an "existential form"of law and politics. 49 Within Europe, the
state overcame religious civil war and limited interstate wars. It was able to
limit interstate wars because it transformed the medieval just cause (justa
causa-partof what today is referred to as the "just war tradition") into the
modern non-discriminatory concept of just enemy (justus hostis)-which
Schmitt describes as the beginning of all international law proper. ° Within
Europe, wars no longer needed to be justified but enemies had to be
treated justly and as equals. States were sovereign and war was the object
of a sovereign decision.
In his earlier work, Schmitt had pointed to the categories of the
sovereign and the enemy as necessary for a proper understanding of legal
and political orders. We have seen that, in Political Theology, Schmitt
emphasized the decision on the exception as the constitutive element of
sovereignty. In the Concept of the Political,Schmitt pointed to the friend-
45 Carl Schmitt, "Ethic of State and Pluralistic State," reprinted in C. Mouffe ed., The Challenge
of CarlSchmitt (London: Verso, 1999) [Schmitt, Ethic of State].
46 See note 31 of Paul Piccone & G.L. Ulmen, "Schmitt's 'Testament' and the Future of Europe"
(1990) 83 Telos 3.
47Carl Schmitt, "The Plight of European Jurisprudence" (1990) 83 Telos 35 at 64 [Schmitt,
The
Plight]. In the appendix to the 1958 edition of this essay in VerfassungrechtlicheAufsdtzeaus den Jahren
1924-1954 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1958) at 427, Schmitt explains that "[p]hilosophy of law is not
for me a vocabulary drawn from an available philosophical system and applied to juridical questions,
but rather the development of concrete concepts out of the immanence of a concrete legal and social
order" [translated by author].
48 Schmitt, The Plight, ibid. at 66.
The Nomos, supra note I at 204.
50
Ibid. at 52.
2004] Review Essay
51 Schmitt, The Concept, supra note 7 at 26. It is important to underline that the friend-enemy
distinction, and not simply the enemy, is what Schmitt identifies as the criterion of the political.
52 Ibid. at 26 and generally.
328 OSGOODE HALL LAW JOURNAL [VOL. 42, NO. 2
of relative lawlessness (New World). 3 Similarly, land and sea war "[e]ach
had its own concepts of enemy, war, and plunder.""4 England, which was
"of Europe, but not in Europe" was the "guardian" of the maritime legal
order. Indeed, England was "the agency of the spatial turn to a new
nomos of the earth [the jus publicum europaeum].
As we have seen, the state, the achievement of the jus publicum
europaeum, harboured within itself the seeds of its own destruction and of
its relativization in the technical age. However, England pointed forward
to the technical age even more directly. For one thing, as Schmitt explains
elsewhere, "[t]he English nation ... grew into the position of a world power
without using the forms and means of state absolutism. The English
leviathan did not become a state."5 " Because of a maritime existence's lack
of rootedness, England, "potentially," provided "even the operational base
for the later leap into the total rootlessness of technology.""
Further, though Schmitt notes that "[o]ther legal institutions were
developed for sea war that also were brought about through humane
concerns," 59 he emphasizes that land wars were the truly limited wars. Sea
wars, he explains, were economic in nature and, in them, one did not
distinguish between combatants and civilian populations in the same way
as in land wars. Sea war pointed forward to the possible total wars of the
future in a way that the limited land wars of Europe did not. Thus, though
England was a guardian of thejuspublicum europaeum,England's maritime
existence also pointed forward to the dissolution of this concrete nomos
into an abstract international law.
53Rayas, the first global lines Schmitt points to, belong to the respublica Christiana and do not
depend on the distinction between Europe and the rest of the world. Rather, they depend on the
distinction between Christian territory and missionary territory that could be allocated by the Pope.
Amity lines, the second global lines Schmitt points to, signal the beginnings of the jus publicum
europaeum and the principle that "European public law," including limited warfare, ended at the line
where the New World began. The Western hemisphere, the third global line Schmitt points to, already
poses a challenge to thejuspublicum Europaeum, as the New World begins to replace the Old World
as center of the earth. See The Nomos, supra note 1 at 86-100. Schmitt's use of "amity lines" in
buttressing the spatial character of thejuspublicum europaeum has been called into question. See e.g.
the comments of Peter Haggenmacher in Schmitt, Le Nomos de laterre,supra note 6 at 38.
The Nomos, supra note 1 at 184.
55
Ibid. at 173.
56
Ibid. at 178.
57Schmitt, The Leviathan, supra note 7
at 79.
58 The Nomos, supra note 1 at 178.
59
Ibid. at 310.
2004] Review Essay
60 Ibid. at 132. Schmitt explains that Gentili, a "true jurist" of the "transitional period" between
the respublica Christiana and thejuspublicum Europaeun, "formulated the battle cry and coined what
may be considered to be the slogan of the epoch in terms of the sociology of knowledge: Silete theologi
in munerealieno![literally: Theologians should remain silent within foreign walls!]" (Ulmen's note). The
Nomos, supra note 1 at 121.
61 The Nomos, supra note 1 at 224.
62 Ibid. at 226. Schmitt points to the Congo Conference of 1885 as an event signaling Europe's
forgetting of the distinction between European state soil and non-European colonial soil. Ibid. at 214
and accompanying notes. He also points to the title of international law texts and to how a European
international law was transformed into an international law. Ibid. at 227 and accompanying notes.
63 Ibid.
at 132-32.
On the "mythologization" of the discovery of America as a "supreme example of a particular
kind of scientific achievement," see Anthony Pagden, EuropeanEncounters with the New World (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993) at 6 and generally. Also germane is Todorov's account,
which points to the superiority of the Europeans' ability to communicate with man as making possible
the conquest but also signals that the Indians were superior in the ability to communicate with the
world. See Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America, The Question of the Other, trans. by Richard
Howard (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999).
330 OSGOODE HALL LAW JOURNAL [VOL. 42, NO. 2
From a positivist perspective, it is mere coincidence that there happen to be European states
joined by legal relations such as treaties and agreements. In this formal sense, there is
nothing juridically specific about the treaties and agreements of one European state with
other European states any more than those with non-European states. The European spirit
developed a specifically European international law from the 17th to the 19th century. At
the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, however, this international law dissolved into
innumerable and indistinguishable relations between fifty to sixty states all over the world,
i.e., into a general arrangement lacking any spatial concreteness.'
65 Schmitt,
The Plight,supra note 47 at 37.
66 Ibid.
67
Ibid. at 37-38. On the standard of civilization, see Gerrit W. Gong, The Standardof 'Civilization'
in InternationalSociety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
68 Schmitt, The Plight,supra note 47 at 36.
69 On the coining of the term "international law," see M. W. Janis, "Jeremy Bentham and the
Fashioning of 'International Law' (1984) 78 Am. J. Int'l L. 405. In light of the foregoing, it is a
worthwhile exercise to think through the propriety of referring to the jus publicum europaeum as
Westphalian international law. Westphalia has become a catchword in contemporary discussion of
international law and politics but, rather than point to a specifically European order "originating" (in
some loose way) in the Treaty of Westphalia, it has come to name an abstract international law based
on the postulate of the sovereignty of any "state."
2004] Review Essay
V. WAR AS A CRIME
80 See e.g. Theodor Meron, "Defining Aggression for the International Criminal Court" (2001)
25 Suffolk Transnat'l L. Rev. 1; Anthony C. Arend & Robert J. Beck, eds., International Law and the
Use of Force: Beyond the UN CharterParadigm(London: Routledge, 1993).
81 See Carl Schmitt, "The Legal World Revolution" (1987) 72 Telos 73 at 85 where he writes of
"humanity as a political subject."
82 The Nomos, supra note 1 at 322.
83 The Warriors:Reflections on Men in Battle (New York: Perennial Library, 1973) at 174.
84 Reinhart Koselleck, "The Historical-Political Semantics of Asymmetric Counterconcepts"
in
Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics ofHistoricalTime, trans. by Keith Tribe (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1985) 159 at 159.
OSGOODE HALL LAW JOURNAL [VOL. 42, NO. 2
85 Schmitt, Ethic of State, supra note 45 at 206. See also Jean-Francois Kervegan, "Carl
Schmitt
and 'World Unity,"' in Mouffe, supra note 45.
86 See e.g. Jurgen Habermas, "Kant's Idea of Perpetual Peace, with the Benefit of Two Hundred
Years' Hindsight" in James Bohman & Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, eds., PerpetualPeace:Essayson Kant's
Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1997) at 113.
87 The problem of abstraction, the impropriety of thinking of humanity as a political category and
the terrifying possibilities opened up by the willingness to conceive of the globe as a political unity are
also prominent features of other thinkers, among which stands out the name of Hannah Arendt. As was
mentioned at the beginning of this article, both Arendt and Schmitt can be helpful in articulating a
properly phenomenological approach to law and politics. Like Schmitt, Arendt shies away from
moralizing and from so-called normative theory. But this comparison of Schmitt and Arendt, of their
many similarities-but also great differences-is a task for another time and place.