The JewishVerfassung, the Israelinomos: the constitutional situation of the beginnings of the State of Israel in the context of Carl Schmitt's political and legal philosophy

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to examine how Carl Schmitt's constitutional theory can be useful to analyse the Constitution of the State of Israel designed in the late 1940s – the impact of which Jacob Taubes once certified. The author analyses three projects created then by Leo Kohn through the prism of Schmitt's concept of Verfassung and Verfassungsgesetz. He also reads in the context of Schmitt's philosophy (from Constitutional Theory and The Nomos of the Earth) the constitutional situation of Israel as a country where, first, the Constitution has not been passed and the basic matter of its legal system is regulated by the Basic Laws; second, citizens of Arab origin are excluded from the national community; and third, the borders of the state remain fluid and change due to the constant partition of the land.