Paolo Amorosa, University of Helsinki Faculty of Law, and Ville Suuronen, University of Turku, have posted 'Ancora tu?' Questioning Carl Schmitt's Place in the Canon of International Law:
In recent decades, the controversial intellectual legacy of Carl Schmitt, leading Nazi lawyer, has returned to prominence in political and legal theory as well as in international law. Schmitt’s work continues to inspire not only conservative and far-right thinkers but, somewhat surprisingly, also serves as a source of inspiration to leftist or even postcolonial positions. This revival is often justified through a decoupling of Schmitt’s odious political commitments from what is often seen as his uniquely valuable insight into the nature and history of the international legal order. The goal of this chapter is to problematize and question this decoupling and the resulting canonical position Schmitt has acquired as a theorist and historian of international law. As our starting point to this complex debate, we offer a critical analysis of Schmitt’s profoundly political narration of the history of international law, and in particular, his supposedly neutral appropriation of Francisco de Vitoria, usually examined apart from the historical context and motives that inspire Schmitt to take up this figure in the 1940s. By comparing Schmitt’s work on Vitoria with his earlier publications on international law, we offer a historical contextualization of the development of Schmitt’s arguments, showing how these were motivated by unscholarly and overtly political intentions. Indeed, Schmitt used Vitoria to develop a complex historical narrative of international law which not only reiterated far-right revanchist positions on the Treaty of Versailles but also aimed to offer an apologetic narrative concerning his own role within the Nazi party.
--Dan Ernst
