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It is a commonplace of Schmitt scholarship that the controversial thinker sought to recapture some of the
elan of the pre-Weimar state through his advocacy of effectively almost unlimited presidential government. Seitzer demonstrates how Schmitt believed comparative history itself could reinvigorate the ailing German state by subtly altering prevailing understandings of the relation of theory and practice in law and politics.
Treating Schmitt's
Constitutional Theory and
Guardian of the Constitution as methodologically sophisticated comparative histories, Seitzer turns Schmitt's argument against itself. He shows how Schmitt's comparative histories, when properly executed, support a decentralized solution to the Republic's difficulties directly contrary to Schmitt's in terms of its purpose and effect. Problem-oriented, comparative-historical studies of key features of the Weimar system suggest that the dispersion of political power facilitates an institutional dialogue over constitutional principle and practice that better provides for political stability and democratic experimentation. These studies also suggest that linking forms of justification with institutions establishes a productive tension among norms and institutions that is essential to maintaining the viability of constitutional democracy, both in the short- and long-term. This work will be of considerable value to Schmitt scholars and those interested in German legal and political theory as well as those concerned with broad issues in comparative law and European history and political theory.
List of contents
Introduction
Retrofitting Liberal Constitutionalism: Constitutional Theory as a Response to the Weimar State Crisis
Exorcising the Ghost of Composite States Past: Local Self-Government and Political Stability in the Kaiserreich
Guarding the Constitution: The American Model in German Constitutional Politics
Rethinking the Role of Courts: Constitutional Democracy as Institutional Dialogue
About the author
JEFFREY SEITZER has been a visiting scholar at the Max-Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and at the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies of the University of London./e The author of numerous articles on legal and political theory and comparative constitutionalism, he is currently translating Schmitt's
Legality and Legitimacy and
Constitutional Theory.
