The brooding omnipresence of Carl Schmitt in contemporary jurisprudence: Reflections on William Scheuerman’s The End of Law : Carl Schmitt in the 21st century

Abstract

Carl Schmitt, whatever his clear deficiencies as a human being and excesses in his overall thought, is, by any objective measure, one of the leading jurisprudential figures of the 20th century. And the questions he raised – about the inevitably of discretionary decision-making in the age of the modern administrative state; the breakdown of liberal parliamentarism; or the importance of that ‘emergencies’ must play in any cogent jurisprudential theory, to name only three – continue to resonate very much into the 21st century. William Scheuerman is at best ambivalent, if not hostile, to many aspects of Schmitt and Schmittian theory, but he presents Schmitt’s ideas with remarkable clarity that enables the reader to understand why it continues to be important to read and to wrestle with him.