Constitutional Failure: Carl Schmitt in Weimar

Kennedy reveals how Schmitt’s argument for a strong but neutral state supported the maximization of market freedom at the cost of the political constitution. She argues that the major fault lines of Weimar liberalism—emergency powers, the courts as “defenders of the constitution,” mass mobilization of anti-liberal politics, ethnic-identity politics, a culture of resentment and contested legitimacy—are not exceptions within the liberal-democratic orders of the West, but central to them. Contending that Schmitt’s thought remains vital today because liberal norms are inadequate to the political challenges facing constitutional systems as diverse as those of Eastern Europe and the United States, Kennedy develops a compelling, rigorous argument that unsettles many assumptions about liberalism, democracy, and dictatorship.

Ellen Kennedy is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Among her books are The Bundesbank: Germany’s Central Bank in the International Monetary System; Freedom and the Open Society: Henri Bergson’s Contribution to Political Philosophy; and the English translation of Carl Schmitt’s Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy.