Constitutional Failure: Carl Schmitt in Weimar by Ellen Kennedy (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 247 Kennedy seeks to illuminate the manner in which the sections on the sociology of law related to contemporary legal thinking. That is four essays out of fourteen in which Weber's 'book' is explicated, dissected, or expounded. Apart from Guenther Roth's opening biographical essay, the rest of the contributions belong to the famil iar routine of Weber the sociologist. The editors clearly think differently. 'This volume provides a critical and up-to date introduction to Weber's magnum opus. While much has been published about the various parts of Economy and Society, this is the first book to cover all its major sec tions and themes, as well as to discuss the methodological vision that unites them' we can read on the back cover. Exactly whose methodological vision might that be, one might reasonably ask? And what sort of vision is it? Mommsen is the only contributor who outlines the tortured history of the Grun driss der Sozialökonomik, the delays in its completion, Weber's drafting of the first four chapters, and the assembly of the remaining chapters by Marianne Weber and Melchior Palyi from the various papers left by Weber on his death. But Mommsen's essay was already published in History and Theory in 2000, since when the argument has naturally moved on. The editorial committee of the Gesamtausgabe has taken the view that the corpus of writing published in the early 1920s under the title Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, and subsequently edited by Johannes Winckelmann, was little more than that—a corpus—and publication is proceeding section by section, each with a different editor. In so doing they have also returned to the original edition, consider ing Winckelmann's editorial interventions to have compromised the most recent edi tions to such an extent that they can no longer form the basis of a scholarly edition. All of which might seem bookish pedantry to the sociologist, but it is as well to spend some time considering quite how 'the most important single work in sociology' (the back cover again) has come down to us and gained this eminence. That is what one might reasonably expect of a critical companion—historically-informed analysis of a text presented to us as a structured whole but whose unity, sequence and hence meaning—beyond the first four chapters—is now increasingly questioned. Keith Tribe The King's School, Worcester Ellen Kennedy, Constitutional Failure: Carl Schmitt in Weimar (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), xii + pp. 256. ISBN 0-8223-3230-2 (hbk); 0-8223-3243-4 (pbk). Most scholars who are interested in Carl Schmitt have known for some time that Ellen Kennedy has been busy writing a new book on Schmitt's involvement in pol itics and political debate in the Weimar Republic. Many of these scholars have also anticipated that, amidst the recent deluge of books on Schmitt, this might be the out standing one, against which others should be measured. The outcome of Kennedy's research on Schmitt is indeed a very good book. This book contains many deeply intriguing ideas and studies, it throws new light on some of the most constitutive aspects of Schmitt's thought, especially in its theological undercurrents, and it sets out an excellent sequence of dense local analyses of the interdisciplinary debates and controversies which shaped the theoretical horizon of Weimar political debate, and which determined Schmitt's theoretical trajectory in the period of his greatest importance. Moreover, Kennedy's detailed knowledge of Schmitt's professional© Max Weber Studies 2008. 248 Max Weber Studies activities, and of his consultative positions at the fringes of government in the late Weimar interim of 1930-1933 and after 1933, provides the basis for an exceptionally solid and authoritative account of exactly how Schmitt contributed to constitu tional developments and affected constitutional policy in the Weimar Republic and in the first years of Hitler's regime. The discussions of constitutional controversies between the lawyers affiliated to the NSDAP in the early 1930s are also particularly informative (pp. 24-25), and they greatly illuminate some of the murkiest places in twentieth-century theoretical history. Naturally, some of the historical claims which Kennedy makes are...