A study of the legal origins of dictatorship~Theorizes the idea of an authoritarian rule of law~Provides a corrective to conventional wisdom about the law of the Third Reich~Offers an intellectual history of Ernst Fraenkel's republished classic The Dual State (1941), restoring to its rightful prominence an important work of intellectual resistance to Nazi dictatorship~Places the case of Nazi Germany in a comparative perspective and sheds light on 21st-century transitions to authoritarian rule~Improves understanding of law's contribution to social order