Liberal Democracy in State of Emergency: Seen by Standing on the Shoulders of Carl Schmitt

緊急狀態下的自由民主：由卡爾施密特的觀點檢視

本文旨在藉由卡爾施密特對於自由主義的嚴厲批評來評估自由民主的重要性。在緊急情況下，無論是總統、法官或任何人，必須做出決定以處理危機。這種高權的行使伴隨著潛在濫用危機；然而，由於緊急事件的不可預測性，亦不可能預先防範高權的濫用。卡爾施密特認為，自由民主的缺陷僅憑「民治政府」，亦即人民的意志即可治癒，在作者看來是毫無根據的想法。相反地，作者認為若要解決緊急法治的不明確，應該藉由立法或司法慣例的方式來管控高權行使緊急權限，縱然在社會中建立起廣泛的慣例要花費許多時間。不管是由維根斯坦認為法治內在即具有不確定性的見解來看，或是由海耶克對法治採取功能論的觀點來看，本文的見解都能夠證立。

This essay aims to assess the vitality of liberal democracy by subjecting it to the acid test of Carl Schmitt’s critique against liberalism. In emergency situation, someone, the president, the court, or whoever the case may be, has to take decisive action to cope with the emergency. There is an inherent risk that any such exercise of sovereign power may lead to its abuse. However, it is impossible to put in place a rule to address such abuse in advance due to the unpredictability of emergencies. The author rejects Schmitt’s democratic mysticism, which argues for popular government based solely on the people’s will for remedying the deficiencies of liberal democracy. Instead, the author argues that the key to resolving the problem of indeterminacy in rule of law in states of emergency should be building the conventions, whether legislative or judicial, necessary to control the sovereign’s exercise of emergency power, although it may take much time for such conventions to be widely established in the society. This stands whether one takes Wittgenstein’s view that indeterminacy can be seen as inherent in the concept of rule of law itself or Hayek’s functionalist definition of rule of law.