Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt; }} (11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) was a German jurist, political theorist, and prominent member of the Nazi Party. He was present as a presiding legal expert during meetings where the decision to bypass the process of formulating a new constitution under the Third Reich was formalized. An approach that would nominally maintain the former constitution was adopted, even as the Leader Principle was promoted to a transcendent super-legal status. Schmitt claimed that the adoption of the Leader Principle in place of a legal constitution was legitimized by the presumed 'Volkisch' or racial constitution of the German people and their identification with Adolf Hitler.

Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. An authoritarian conservative theorist, he is noted as a critic of parliamentary democracy, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism. His works cover political theory, legal theory, continental philosophy, and political theology. However, they are controversial, mainly due to his intellectual support for and active involvement with Nazism. According to the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', "Schmitt was an acute observer and analyst of the weaknesses of liberal constitutionalism and liberal cosmopolitanism. But there can be little doubt that his preferred cure turned out to be infinitely worse than the disease." Provided by Wikipedia