ABSTRACT
In style and approach, Carl Schmitt’s The Nomos of the Earth represents a departure from his earlier Weimar and inter-war works (2003). Written between 1942 and 1945, the book widens the scope of the juridical pessimism already established as one of the main themes of his career – sovereignty and legitimacy on the German national level – to questions surrounding the status of international law. In line with his claims about the historical withdrawal of jurisprudence in the national framework, The Nomos of the Earth develops an extended historical analysis of what Schmitt sees as the decline of the Eurocentric order of international law, beginning with Hellenism and reaching its nadir in the postwar institutions of international law. The book advances an idiosyncratic analysis of the universe of international jurisprudence surrounding the League of Nations, whose roots extend all the way back to the post-Napoleonic Monroe Doctrine (1823).
