131214840-Carl-Schmitt

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the contemporary League of Nations that the League of Nations only guarantees the external
status quo of its members and refrains from intervention in their internal questions. 19 But
with the same logic that led monarchical legitimacy to intervention, so too can intervention
be justified by an appeal to the people's right of self-determination. In the numerous protests
against the Soviet government motivated by democratic convictions, the essential
presumption of the democratic principle of nonintervention, namely, that a constitution must
not contradict the will of a people, is recognizable. If a constitution is imposed and
democratic principles are thus violated, then the people's right to self-determination may be
restored, and that happens precisely through intervention. An intervention based on the
concept of monarchical legitimacy is illegal in democratic theory only because it violates the
principle of the people's self-determination. By contrast a restoration of free selfdetermination
achieved through intervention, the liberation of a people from a tyrant, cannot
violate the principle of nonintervention in any way, but only creates the preconditions for the
principle of nonintervention. Even a modern League of Nations based on democratic
foundations needs a concept of legitimacy, and as a result of this, it also requires the
possibility of intervention if the principle on which it is juridically based should be
damaged. 20
Thus, for many juridical investigations today, one can begin with democratic maxims without
risking the misunderstanding of having accepted all of the definitions which constitute the
political reality of democracy. Theoretically, and in critical times also practically, democracy
is helpless before the Jacobin argument, that is, when faced with the authoritative
identification of a minority as the people and with the decisive transfer of the concept from
the quantitative into the qualitative. Interest is then directed toward the creation and shaping
of the popular will, and the belief that all power comes from the people takes on a meaning
similar to the belief that all authoritative power comes from God. Both maxims permit
various governmental forms and juristic consequences in political reality. A scientific study
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