ABSTRACT
It is precisely this division of the earth and the juridical-political order it determines that Schmitt seeks to grasp using the central concept of nomos. If
Mitchell Dean, Schmitt’s exercise was to explore the ‘where’ of law (Dean 2006). As is detailed elsewhere in this volume, this concept is a derivation of the Greek word nemein meaning ‘to take or appropriate’ (Schmitt 2003: 67). In German nemein translates as nehmen, which, in turn, is linked to the verbs teilen (to divide or distribute) and weiden (to pasture) (Schmitt 2003: 344-5). The idea of nomos, then, encompasses these three dimensions – the appropriation, division, and cultivation of land – as the ‘primal processes of human history, three acts of the primal drama’ (Schmitt 2003: 351). A form of spatial consciousness, Schmitt refers to nomos as a ‘fence-word’ because ‘like a wall it is based on sacred orientations’ (Schmitt 2003: 70).
