history

Hitler’s exercise of power found intellectual support in the writing of the jurist Carl Schmitt, who insisted that no constitution can possibly provide for all contingencies and that the executive must be able to act beyond the limits of ordinary law if liberal democracy itself is to survive.

“The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.”

“Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”

Schmitt is a fantastic read for anyone serious about political and legal philosophy. The Concept of the Political and Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy are must reads for people with brains.