11 THE ITALIAN LAW JOURNAL NO. 1 (2025)
Decisionism or Schmittian Institutionalism: Schmitt as a Reader of Maurice Hauriou and Santi Romano
by Ronaldo Porto Macedo Jr. Carl Schmitt is known for being a representative of decisionist legal thought. I consider that Schmitt’s decisionist thinking of the 1920s was transformed, without becoming contradictory, when it received, during the end of that decade, the influence of institutionalist legal thought, mainly through the works of Maurice Hauriou and Santi Romano. In other words, one can speak of institutionalism in Schmitt’s thought from the 1930s onwards. To present this argument, it is necessary to demonstrate the coherence of Schmittian legal thought, particularly how it reconciles the institutionalist pluralism of the 1930s with the decisionist monism of the 1920s. To this end, it is necessary to systematically reconstruct Schmitt’s thought from the perspective of his legal theory. Carl Schmitt recognises the great importance of the works of Hauriou and Santi Romano for the development of his trichotomy regarding legal thought. For him, ‘the distinction suggested here between thinking based on norms and thinking based on order emerged and became fully conscious only in the last few decades. In the preceding authors, it is not possible to trace an antithesis like that contained in the passage from Santi Romano’. The article first presents an overview of institutionalism and its pluralist implications. Then, I analyse Schmitt’s Concrete-Order Thinking and examine its internal coherence. DOI 10.23815/2421-2156.ITALJ ISSN 2421-2156
