From Westphalia to Versailles: The Transformation of International Order and the Crisis of Legal Boundaries

The essay traces Schmitt’s interpretation of the shift from the classical European state system to the post–World War I order. The Treaty of Versailles, in Schmitt’s view, destabilized the traditional balance of sovereign states and introduced new forms of moralized intervention. Balakrishnan explains how Schmitt saw this as a collapse of the old “nomos” of the earth—a spatial and legal order that once defined limits to warfare and authority. Read more

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