Right from the Beginning or Law as Politics

Right from the Beginning

Author: Patrick J Buchannan

Warm and self-deprecating, surprisingly witty, honest to a fault about his political views, and not quite as knee-jerk a Reagan conservative as I've been led to expect. Mr. Buchanan has a secret weapon: charm.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Syndicated columnist Buchanan begins this memoir by explaining why he refused to be enlisted as the conservative Republicans' choice to succeed Reagan as president. As he discusses his Irish Catholic roots, growing up in Washington, D.C., and Chevy Chase, Md., and attending that ``citadel of liberalism,'' Columbia's journalism school, he looks back with nostalgic affection to the 1950s. His eight years working for Nixon are covered in one short chapter, and about Reagan, this White House insider says even less. In a book that is part autobiography, part political agenda, Buchanan advocates prayer in the schools, the death penalty, support for the government of South Africa, laser-based nuclear weaponry and repeal of the amendment that limits a president to two terms. He defends Oliver North, morally condemns AIDS victims and thunders against the liberal ``milquetoast'' Catholic Church of the 1980s. Conservative Book Club selection. (May)

Library Journal

$18.95. autobiog Buchanan, columnist and television commentator, writes about his beliefs. His autobiography is a veritable celebration of Catholicism and masculinity, replete with accounts of youthful pranks, scrapes, and arrests. Raised by his father to be a fighter, Buchanan welcomed conflict and glided effortlessly into the politics of confrontation. The final two chapters of his book are highly polemical and will undoubtedly alienate some: He urges the elimination of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, decries superpower arms control negotiations, and asserts that ``America's place should be at South Africa's side, sheltering this tormented country from her enemies.'' Politics aside, persistent references to streets and neighborhoods could prove irksome to readers unfamiliar with the metropolitan D.C. area.Kimberly G. Allen, Georgetown University Law Lib., Washington, D.C.

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Law As Politics: Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism

Author: David Dyzenhaus

While antiliberal legal theorist Carl Schmitt has long been considered by Europeans to be one of this century's most significant political philosophers, recent challenges to the fundamental values of liberal democracies have made Schmitt's writings an unavoidable subject of debate in North America as well. In an effort to advance our understanding not only of Schmitt but of current problems of liberal democracy, David Dyzenhaus presents translations of classic German essays on Schmitt alongside more recent writings by distinguished political theorists and jurists. Neither a defense of nor an attack on Schmitt, Law as Politics offers the first balanced response to his powerful critique of liberalism.

One of the major players in the 1920s debates, an outspoken critic of the Versailles Treaty and the Weimar Constitution, and a member of the Nazi party who provided juridical respectability to Hitler's policies, Schmitt contended that people are a polity only to the extent that they share common enemies. He saw the liberal notion of a peaceful world of universal citizens as a sheer impossibility and attributed the problems of Weimar to liberalism and its inability to cope with pluralism and political conflict. In the decade since his death, Schmitt's writings have been taken up by both the right and the left and scholars differ greatly in their evaluation of Schmitt's ideas. Law as Politics thematically organizes in one volume the varying engagements and confrontations with Schmitt's work and allows scholars to acknowledge-and therefore be in a better position to negotiate-an important paradox inscribed in the very nature of liberal democracy.

Law as Politics will interest political philosophers, legal theorists, historians, and anyone interested in Schmitt's relevance to current discussions of liberalism.

Table of Contents:

	Foreword
	Acknowledgments
	Introduction: Why Carl Schmitt?	1
Pt. I	Political Theory and Law
	Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Systematic Reconstruction and Countercriticism	23
	The Concept of the Political: A Key to Understanding Carl Schmitt's Constitutional Theory	37
	From Legitimacy to Dictatorship - and Back Again: Leo Strauss's Critique of the Anti-Liberalism of Carl Schmitt	56
	Hostis Not Inimicus: Toward a Theory of the Public in the Work of Carl Schmitt	92
	Pluralism and the Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy	109
	Liberalism as a "Metaphysical System": The Methodological Structure of Carl Schmitt's Critique of Political Rationalism	131
	Carl Schmitt and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy	159
Pt. II	Legal Theory and Politics
	Carl Schmitt on Sovereignty and Constituent Power	179
	The 1933 "Break" in Carl Schmitt's Theory	196
	The Dilemmas of Dictatorship: Carl Schmitt and Constitutional Emergency Powers	217
	Revolutions and Constitutions: Hannah Arendt's Challenge to Carl Schmitt	252
	Carl Schmitt's Internal Critique of Liberal Constitutionalism: Verfassungslehre as a Response to the Weimar State Crisis	281
	Notes on Contributors	313
	Index	315