Die Gesetzgebung in Kriegszeiten

Ein Beitrag zur Doktrin der Ermächtigung in Europa

Abstract

This article analyses the system of delegated legislation and »plenipotentiary powers« in wartime at the turn of the twentieth century from a European perspective. In France, Germany, England and Italy one finds, with differing formalities, particularly during the First World War, a recourse to delegated legislation or legislative capability which redefined the limits between the legislative and executive power, moving the fulcrum of their equilibrium in the direction of the latter. Contemporary legal science, including such authors as Carl Schmitt, Carré de Malberg and others, examined the significance, both juridical and political, of a phenomenon which characterises the principal European states – at least as regards Germany and Italy – on the threshold of their experience of totalitarianism.