Carl Schmitt's Fear: Nomos – Norm – Network

Abstract

Carl Schmitt is still astonishingly present in the legal discourse. Yet instead of indulging in the study of his explicit 'lesson' and its possible impact on contemporary legal problems, it might be worthwhile to survey the primary cause of his greatest fear. Following this perspective, the article analyses Schmitt's concept of the nomos, distinguishing it from the traditional normativist approach on the one hand and confronting it with a more recent understanding of law in terms of the network conception on the other. Thus Schmitt's view of the developing legal system in the twentieth century proves to be relevant to our current efforts to grasp newly emerging legal phenomena in the twenty-first century.