This book investigates one of the oldest questions of legal philosophy---the relationship between law and legitimacy. It analyses the legal theories of three eminent public lawyers of the Weimar era, Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, and Hermann Heller. Their theories addressed the problems of legal and political order in a crisis-ridden modern society and so they remain highly relevant to contemporary debates about legal order in the age of pluralism.

Schmitt, the philosopher of German fascism, has recently received much attention. Kelsen is well-known as one of the main exponents of the philosophy of legal positivism. Heller is virtually unknown outside Germany.

Dyzenhaus exposes the dangers of Schmitt's legal philosophy by situating it in the legal context of constitutional crisis to which he responded. He also points out the severs inadequacies of Kelsen's legal positivism. In a wide-ranging account of the predicaments of contemporary legal and political philosophy, Heller's position is argued to be the most promising of the three.

David Dyzenhaus is a professor in the Faculty of Law and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.

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'Dyzenhaus's ... reflections on Schmitt's constitutional position are nuanced and insightful. ... This book also deserves broad attention because of the way in which it relocates Hermann Heller at the centre-stage of Weimar political debate. ... shows a breadth of historical and sociological knowledge which is unusual amongst legal theorists and historians ...' History of European Ideas 26 (2000) 225-264

'The subtle contours ... will repay careful and sustained reading ... scholarly and well written ... a powerful antidote to the sad apologetics still being pandered by those who have sought to promote the work of one of fascism's most intelligent theorists.' Mark Neocleous, Radical Philosophy, jul-aug 99