Das Unmögliche von Anfang an

The origin of »universal« public international law is usually associated with the interwar period and the repudiation of imperial warfare after the First World War. The »Wilsonian« paradigm of international relations was successively institutionalized in the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact and theorized as a new paradigm of international law after empire and beyond Europe. In his The Nomos of the Earth, Carl Schmitt gives a different and intellectually fascinating account of both the origins and the underlying legal structure of universal public international law. He situates its origins in the 1880s and the rise of a new form of political, legal, and economic hegemony. The article discusses Schmitt's account in the context of the theory of international law around and after 1900 and asks how it can contribute to a more profound understanding of the structure of international law today.