Statute and Judgment

Summary

Statute and Judgment offers Schmitt’s theory of adjudication. Schmitt responds to the attack on legal determinacy that is associated with the free law movement (a German precursor to pragmatist and critical approaches to adjudication). While Schmitt adopts the view, as put forward by proponents of the free law movement, that statutory law is inherently indeterminate and must fail to guide judicial decision-taking in particular cases, Statute and Judgment aims to reconstruct legal determinacy on the basis of an analysis of the customs and conventions of legal practice. Schmitt’s attempt to show how legal determinacy is possible prefigures later arguments to the effect that a situation of normality is a condition of the legitimate applicability of legal norms.