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Schmitt’s Spectre and Kelsen’s Promise: The Polemics on the Guardian of the Constitution

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Book cover Judicial Activism

Part of the book series: Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice ((IUSGENT,volume 44))

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Abstract

The following paper begins by briefly stating the position of Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen on the question of the guardian of the Constitution, relating it afterwards with each author’s conception of democracy and views of the proper nature of the judicial function. For both authors, the conception of democracy is the key to determine the guardian of the Constitution. Furthermore, just as these conceptions of democracy can be envisaged as the two sides of the same coin so it happens, in a way, with the views of Schmitt and Kelsen over who should be the guardian of the Constitution. Finally, it is argued that the positions of both authors have an enduring relevance that can be demonstrated in the current situation of constitutionalism in Europe.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is all the more perplexing if one recalls that Kelsen claimed to locate is analysis on the domain of legal science, see Kelsen (2008a, b: 104–105).

  2. 2.

    See Dyzenhaus (1997: 122).

  3. 3.

    See Renan (1996: 241).

  4. 4.

    See Everson and Joerges (2013: 22–23). The authors’ thesis is that the discrepancy between the German Constitutional Court’s commitment to the country’s Constitution and the European Court of Justice’s commitment to the integration project has been replaced by the converging attitudes of both courts to the primacy of the political in the handling of the financial crisis.

  5. 5.

    See Schmitt (1996). The book is composed of three parts: “Justice as the guardian of the Constitution”; “The concrete constitutional situation of the present time”; “The Reich’s President as the guardian of the Constitution”.

  6. 6.

    See Dyzenhaus (1997: 76).

  7. 7.

    See Schmitt (1996: 159) [I use the translation set in Dyzenhaus (1997: 77)].

  8. 8.

    See Schmitt (1996: 52–53).

  9. 9.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 58–105).

  10. 10.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 58).

  11. 11.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 58–59, 88).

  12. 12.

    See Kelsen (1942: 185); idem (2008: 19); see also Paulson (2003: 235–236).

  13. 13.

    See Öhlinger (2003: 211–214); Lagi (2012: 283).

  14. 14.

    See Lepsius (2007: 109).

  15. 15.

    See van Ooyen (2008: VIII–IX).

  16. 16.

    See Schmitt (1996: 88).

  17. 17.

    See Schmitt (1996: 74).

  18. 18.

    See Lepsius (2007: 107).

  19. 19.

    See Schmitt (1996: 79).

  20. 20.

    See Schmitt (1994: 166 ff.).

  21. 21.

    See Schmitt (1996: 79).

  22. 22.

    See Schmitt (1996: 91).

  23. 23.

    See de Brito (2000: 131 ff.).

  24. 24.

    On this development, see Lepsius (2007: 104–109).

  25. 25.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 93).

  26. 26.

    See Lepsius (2007: 116–117); idem (2010: 150–151); see also Kelsen (1949: 293).

  27. 27.

    See Kelsen (2006: 174 ff.).

  28. 28.

    See Kelsen (2006: 178).

  29. 29.

    See Jestaedt and Lepsius (2006: XXV–XXVI).

  30. 30.

    See Schmitt (1996: 155–156).

  31. 31.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 101).

  32. 32.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 103).

  33. 33.

    See footnote 32.

  34. 34.

    According to Schmitt’s view of political representation this phenomenon amounts to a presentation of the people’s invisible unity: cf. Schmitt (2010: 209).

  35. 35.

    See Kelsen (2006: 209).

  36. 36.

    See Ackerman (2010: 83–85).

  37. 37.

    See Lepsius (2007: 123).

  38. 38.

    See Herrera (1994: 208).

  39. 39.

    See Schmitt (1996: 15).

  40. 40.

    See Schmitt (1996: 45).

  41. 41.

    See Schmitt (1996: 12–14).

  42. 42.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 67).

  43. 43.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 67, 72).

  44. 44.

    See Schmitt (1996: 31, 42).

  45. 45.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 70–71); Dyzenhaus (1997: 113); La Torre (2013: 159–160).

  46. 46.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 76).

  47. 47.

    See Waldron (2006: 1348).

  48. 48.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 40).

  49. 49.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 78–79).

  50. 50.

    See Kelsen (2008a, b: 76).

  51. 51.

    See Schmitt (1996: 22, see also pp. 50–52).

  52. 52.

    See Schmitt (1996: 22, see also p. 35).

  53. 53.

    See van Ooyen (2008: IX).

  54. 54.

    See Schmitt (1996: 1).

  55. 55.

    See Lepsius (2007: 115, 121).

  56. 56.

    See Schmitt (2009: 38–41). On this, see also Section III of Luís Pereira Coutinho’s contribution to this volume.

  57. 57.

    See Lembcke (2012: 76–77).

  58. 58.

    Curiously this warning is kept by modern positivists like Luigi Ferrajoli, when he says that “the only way that the legislator has to submit the judge to his will is to reduce as much as possible the discretionary powers and to execute well his own job, that is, to produce legal norms with the most univocal and precise meaning as possible”. See Ferrajoli (2013: 54).

  59. 59.

    See Posner and Vermeule (2010: 204–206).

  60. 60.

    See Rawls (1996: 231).

  61. 61.

    See Chalmers (2013: 26–27). It must not be forgotten at this point that Schmitt defended a development of an economic and financial state of exception beside an original military and police state of exception. According to Schmitt, each nucleus of the state has its own form of exception. The judicial state has its form of exception in the martial court, the executive power in the suspension of constitutional rights, and the legislative constitutional state in the executive decrees with force of law on matters of economy and finance: see Schmitt (1996: 131). This last one could perhaps be the ideal scenario for the development of a situation in which the guarding of the European constitution would increasingly belong to the political realm [this shift from a legalistic to a political constitution is the hypothesis suggested by Franz C. Mayer, although in a somewhat different, more institutional, context: see Mayer (2004: 411 ff.; 433–435)].

  62. 62.

    See Chalmers (2013: 27). Chalmers also points out two other Schmittian features of Europe’s response to the financial crisis, beside the power of decision viewed as a foundational power that precedes law and gives a prior power to the administration. On the one hand, the interests of the political order and of ensuring no threat to stability, rather than any broader justification, were assumed as the central aims of the ESM, as stated in Article 3 of the ESM Treaty; on the other hand, the crisis is presented as one of systemic risk whereby the whole European economy could collapse in a way that to refuse aid or to default can be viewed as an act of enmity not only towards the euro, but Europe itself.

  63. 63.

    See Alexandrino (2014: 53).

  64. 64.

    See Everson and Joerges (2013: 8, 22–24). See also the authors’ analysis of the Pringle case, at pp. 19 ff.

  65. 65.

    See Nogueira de Brito (2014: 73 ff.).

  66. 66.

    See Cisotta and Gallo (2013: 480).

  67. 67.

    Quoted in Schmitt (1996: 35).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de Lisboa, Alameda da Universidade, 1649-014, Lisbon, Portugal

    Miguel Nogueira de Brito

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  1. Miguel Nogueira de Brito
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Correspondence to Miguel Nogueira de Brito .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Luís Pereira Coutinho

  2. Università "Magna Graecia" di Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy

    Massimo La Torre

  3. University of San Diego, San Diego, California, USA

    Steven D. Smith

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de Brito, M.N. (2015). Schmitt’s Spectre and Kelsen’s Promise: The Polemics on the Guardian of the Constitution. In: Coutinho, L., La Torre, M., Smith, S. (eds) Judicial Activism. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 44. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18549-1_7

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