Wrestling with the Angel by McNulty Tracy

Author:McNulty, Tracy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL010000, Political Science/History and Theory, PSY026000, Psychology/Movements/Psychoanalysis
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2014-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

Sovereignty relates to “borderline cases,” those at the edge of the law’s jurisdiction. But at the same time, sovereignty is itself a border case, since the sovereign is neither internal nor external to the legal order. To describe his place, Schmitt resorts to an oxymoronic formulation: “Although the sovereign stands outside [steht außerhalb] of the normally valid juridical order, he nevertheless belongs [gehört] to it, for it is he who must decide whether the constitution needs to be suspended in its entirety” (7, translated modified). When we try to represent logically the different moments or positions implied in this figure, it becomes clear that three different understandings of the border are in play.

The first diagram (figure 4.1) might describe the simple case of “belonging to” the juridical order. In the binary rules of classical logic, either a thing is or it is not. P and –P are complementary and mutually exclusive, meaning that together they cover all possible cases. This is the “law of the excluded middle,” which excludes any consideration of the border case. The border is simply disregarded. In the terms of Schmitt’s argument, P is the “juridical order” or nomos, and –P is the anomic situation that threatens its existence. The sovereign belongs to the juridical order.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.