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Fascist Claims to Sovereign Power: Law, Politics and the Romanian Legionary Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2023

Cosmin Sebastian Cercel*
Affiliation:
New Europe College, Bucharest, Romania

Abstract

This article aims to provide the basis for a theoretical framework conceptualising Romanian fascist ideology at work in relation to law and politics, by focusing on the way it operated within the movement's understanding of foundational concepts of state power, sovereignty and justice. In doing so, I investigate the relationship between fascism, understood here as both an ideology and a political movement, and constitutional law in the context of interwar Romania. I ask how the ideology – that is, the doctrinal body of Romanian ultranationalism, as well as political practice – related to core constitutional concepts such as sovereign power and popular sovereignty. Accordingly, I map the nexus between law and politics within the ideology of the Romanian main ultranationalist movement – the Legion of Archangel Michael and its paramilitary branch, the Iron Guard.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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65 Ibid., 271.

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71 Îndreptar Juridic pentru Legionari (Chișinău: Ziarul România Creștină, 1935).

72 Ibid., i.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid., 1.

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid., 2–5.

77 Ibid., 9.

78 In relation to this, one should note the impressive list of no less than thirty defenders that Codreanu was able to muster for his trials in 1938 alongside their political affiliations, mostly being members or sympathisers of the Legion. For instance see ACNSAS, fond Penal, file no. 110237, Vol. 3, 120–2.

79 While this stand is not made explicit in Codreanu's writings, it strikes one as similar to a Thomist conception of natural law. See J. Budziszewski, Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 347–418.

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