Schmitt frames liberal democratic sovereignty as exception to commanding the exception

Evidence

Carl Schmitt famously declared the sovereign to be he who decides the exception. Less noticed is his qualification that allows him to draw so compelling a conception of the sovereign. A sovereign will be clearly identified, he says, where his act “is not hampered in some way by [constitutional] checks and balances,” this placing him “outside the normally valid legal system.” There are two senses of sovereignty embedded here, only one of which is recognized as “real.” Schmittian sovereignty is outside the law, the Hobbesian sovereign not bound by the law he himself makes and so can change, the commanding sovereign of Austinian legal positivism. By contrast, Schmitt renders liberal democratic sovereignty the exception to commanding the exception, an inversion that reduces to a sovereignty somehow lacking power, constrained, incomplete. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1624

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes the Schmittian absolute sovereign from the ‘incomplete’ liberal democratic one — a useful conceptual tool for discussing political authority.