Friendly Sovereignty: Historical Perspectives on Carl Schmitt's Neglected Exception
Ted H. Miller, "Friendly Sovereignty: Historical Perspectives on Carl Schmitt's Neglected Exception"
English | ISBN: 0271093374 | 2022 | 252 pages | PDF | 5 MB
English | ISBN: 0271093374 | 2022 | 252 pages | PDF | 5 MB
Over the last one hundred years, the term “sovereignty” has often been associated with the capacity of leaders to declare emergencies and to unleash harmful, extralegal force against those deemed enemies. Friendly Sovereignty explores the blind spots of this influential perspective.
Ted H. Miller challenges the view of sovereignty propounded by Carl Schmitt, the Weimar and Nazi–period jurist and political theorist whose theory undergirds this understanding of sovereignty. Claiming a return to concepts of sovereignty forgotten by his liberal contemporaries, Schmitt was preoccupied with the legal exceptions required, he said, to rescue polities in crisis. Much is missing from what Schmitt harvests from the past. His framework systematically overlooks another extralegal power, one that often caused consternation, even among absolutists like Thomas Hobbes. Sovereigns also made exceptions for friends, allies, and dependents.
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