Schmitt, Carl (1888–1985)

Carl Schmitt was a conservative critic of the Weimar Republic’s liberal-democratic constitution. After Hitler’s rise to power, he allied himself briefly to Nazism, and despite having fallen from favour and having revised his position even before the war, was never able to rehabilitate himself from the Nazi taint. Interned at Nuremberg in 1945, he was never brought to trial, but was banned from teaching thereafter. His critique of liberalism lay in liberalism’s alleged inability to deal with the nature of politics. Schmitt continues to exert a vast influence on German public law, legal theory and political philosophy, as well as on European right-wing thought. His work remains important for liberals and opponents of liberalism for the challenges it poses to the neutrality of the liberal state and its legal order.