The Legal Theory of Carl Schmitt provides a detailed analysis of this thinker, who was so crucial to the development of Western legal thought.

Mariano Croce is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at SOAS, University of London, and Adjunct Professor of Legal Philosophy at Sapienza - University of Rome. His research includes legal theory, socio-legal studies, legal pluralism, political philosophy, democratic theory

Andrea Salvatore is Research Fellow at Sapienza - University of Rome. His research interests lie in the areas of political theory, international relations, history of ideas, and the philosophy of war and peace

Part 1: Concepts: decision, institutions and concrete order 1. The bumpy road to institutionalism: Schmitt's way-out of decisionism 2. Exploring Schmitt's institutionalism: institutions and normality 3. Institutionalist decisionism: law as the shelter of society 4. Institution and identity: reassessing Schmitt's political theory Part 2: Oppositions: his "enemies" and "friends" 5. Schmitt vs. Kelsen: the social ontology of legal life 6. Schmitt vs. Hauriou: the politicization of institutionalism 7. Schmitt vs. Romano: institutionalism without pluralism? 8. Schmitt vs. Mortati: the concretization of the concrete order Part 3. Implications: Schmitt's institutionalism and the current legal debate 9. The impossibility of legal indeterminacy 10. The inconceivability of legal pluralism