Without advocating Carl Schmitt, I think you are misrepresenting his views there. His concept of the &#x27;Ausnahmezustand&#x27; (state of exception) is broader than just executive orders. He basically meant to describe the powers of a particular executive in a constitutional system by looking at the &quot;not normal&quot; case. This is similar to security in computers - you are not interested in the case where the computer behaves nicely. You want to know what you can do when things go wrong. So he described the power of the state as defined by what it can possibly do if they abuse them as the constitution enables it to do: &quot;Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.&quot;