The Dilemmas of Dictatorship: Carl Schmitt and Constitutional Emergency Powers

Abstract

The first line of Carl Schmitt's Political Theology is perhaps the most famous sentence—certainly one of the most infamous—in German political theory: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” [Souverän ist, wer über den Ausnahmezustand entscheidet]. And yet the full significance of this famous sentence is often underestimated. I intend to focus upon 1) its significance in the overall trajectory of Schmitt's Weimar work, and 2) its potential significance for contemporary constitutional theories of emergency powers.