The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship SIGNED ASSOCIATION COPY
New York: Octagon Books, 1969.
Hardcover. A presentable signed later printing of Fraenkel’s foundational work on authoritarian governance, inscribed by the author in Berlin in 1970 to President Frederick P. McGinnis, then head of Alaska Methodist University (now Alaska Pacific University), whose early leadership helped shape one of the country’s youngest private liberal arts institutions.
Originally published in English in 1941, The Dual State is one of the most important legal and political analyses of Nazi Germany to emerge from the anti-fascist exile community. In it, Fraenkel, a Jewish socialist lawyer who fled Germany for the U.S. in 1938, lays out his now-famous theory of the coexistence between a “normative state” (ruled by law) and a “prerogative state” (ruled by arbitrary power)—a chilling duality that continues to resonate in contemporary debates about the erosion of democratic norms, as detailed in Aziz Huq's March 2025 Atlantic article "America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State."
This 1969 reprint is notable not just for its intellectual significance but also for its personalized inscription from Fraenkel, dated July 13, 1970, Berlin, in full: "To President Frederick P. McGinnis / With the compliments of the author / Berlin, 13. July 1970 / Ernst Fraenkel". The circumstances of this transatlantic exchange remain unknown, though McGinnis’s presidency was marked by academic expansion and involvement in early international exchange programs. Whether the two men met in Berlin during a Cold War academic conference or through mutual legal-political interests is unclear—but the connection opens a compelling avenue for further research. Nevertheless, a striking artifact linking one of the 20th century’s sharpest minds on dictatorship with a quiet figure in American academia, and a timely relic of democratic exchange made extra potent during our present moment of acute global ideological fractures.
Signed and inscribed by Ernst Fraenkel to Frederick P. McGinnis and dated 1970, Berlin, to front free endpaper. 8 3/4" X 5 3/4". xvi, 248pp. Bound in red cloth over boards, with publisher's device in gilt to upper board and spine lettered in kind. Mild wear to binding, with faint scattered rubbing and dust spotting to cloth and gentle bumping and rubbing to extremities. Light foxing to edges of text block. Binding is firm and sound. Pages are clean and unmarked. No dust jacket, as issued. Very good. Item #16808
Price: $1,725.00