The Gap in the Written Law and the Unwritable Act of Decision

Abstract

This chapter examines Carl Schmitt's claim, articulated in his 1922 book Political Theology, that there is a “gap” in the law corresponding to the place of the exception and that the concept “legal order” is made out of two independent and autonomous elements, norm and decision, which together constitute the juristic sphere. Paul and Schmitt challenge spatial notions of law that establish a boundary between an “inside” and an “outside” by topologizing “inside” and “outside” as continuous: through the “fulfillment of the law” in Paul, and through the strategy of sovereign exception in Schmitt. Schmitt even describes sovereignty as a “border concept,” a concept that pertains to borderline cases. This chapter also considers Jacques Lacan's proposal that offers a different understanding of the law as representation, whose function is symbolic rather than imaginary, and concludes by discussing the question of the border within the context of political theology.