A “Sympathetic Critique” of Law-Skepticism on the New Right
Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule has posted an interesting and worthwhile essay at The New Digest responding to the growth of law-skepticism among some in the New Right (and, in particular though he does not say it, among many MAGA thought-leaders). While I do not share Vermeule’s perspective, the essay is a worthwhile read. A few excerpts:
On one level, it is perfectly understandable that many on the New Right have veered towards versions of law-skepticism. It is a natural overcorrection to the world around them, one in which the fanatics and cynics of liberalism appropriate the “rule of law” for transparently ideological, sectarian and indeed partisan ends. In that world, our world, talk of “the rule of law” and “human rights” becomes a vehicle for enforcing grotesqueries of the liberal programme, as in a notorious USAID document during the Biden years that said the rule of law requires adopting gender ideology. In that world, our world, prominent law professors openly thirst to crush dissenters from legal liberalism, comparing them to the defeated Nazis. When told by both the legal left and by legal conservatives that authority in the sense of positive will, not truth, makes the law, and that law only ever enforces the will of some sovereign upon others, it is perfectly understandable for the New Right to think: “Very well then. Let us become the sovereign, and we will enforce our will upon our enemies, doing unto them what they have been doing unto us for years.” If, as Carl Schmitt said,2 law under liberalism becomes a poisoned dagger with which factions stab each other in the back, it is not hard to think: better to be the one wielding the dagger.
However understandable, this attitude is indeed an over-correction. Finding themselves in a situation of tragic conflict in which the law has
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