Emergencies and the Limits of Legality

An examination of the ability of law and the courts to constrain state power exercised in the course of an emergency.

Victor V. Ramraj (Edited by)

9780521895996, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 November 2008

428 pages
23.2 x 15.5 x 3 cm, 0.81 kg

Review of the hardback: 'Emergencies and the Limits of Legality is one of the more intellectually substantial of the many edited collections of scholarship that have been generated by the international academic community in response to the way in which governments have reacted to the terrorist attacks on the United States of 2001 and subsequent acts of political violence. … this book was conceived by its editor with an admirably precise focus upon which leading scholars in the field have contributed essays which, while offering a range of diverse and competing perspectives, come together as a collection with a most satisfying coherence.' Public Law

Most modern states turn swiftly to law in an emergency. The global response to the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States was no exception, and the wave of legislative responses is well documented. Yet there is an ever-present danger, borne out by historical and contemporary events, that even the most well-meaning executive, armed with extraordinary powers, will abuse them. This inevitably leads to another common tendency in an emergency, to invoke law not only to empower the state but also in a bid to constrain it. Can law constrain the emergency state or must the state at times act outside the law when its existence is threatened? If it must act outside the law, is such conduct necessarily fatal to aspirations of legality? This collection of essays - at the intersection of legal, political and social theory and practice - explores law's capacity to constrain state power in times of crisis.

1. No doctrine more pernicious? Emergencies and the limits of legality Victor V. Ramraj
Part I. Legality and Extralegality: 2. The compulsion of legality David Dyzenhaus
3. Extralegality and the ethic of political responsibility Oren Gross
Part II. Conceptual and Normative Theories: 4. Emergency logic: prudence, morality, and the rule of law Terry Nardin
5. Indefinite detention: rule by law or rule of law? R. Rueban Balasubramaniam
Part III. Political and Sociological Theories: 6. The political constitution of emergency powers: some conceptual issues Mark Tushnet
7. A topography of emergency power Nomi Claire Lazar
8. Law, terror and social movements: the repression-mobilisation nexus Colm Campbell
Part IV. Prospective Constraints on State Power: 9. Emergency strategies for prescriptive legal positivists: anti-terrorist law and legal theory Tom Campbell
10. Ordinary laws for emergencies and democratic derogation from rights Kent Roach
11. Presidentialism and emergency government William E. Scheuerman
Part V. Judicial Responses to Official Disobedience: 12. Necessity, torture and the rule of law A. P. Simester
13. Deny everything: intelligence activities and the rule of law Simon Chesterman
Part VI. Post-Colonial and International Perspectives: 14. Exceptions, bare life and colonialism Johan Geertsema
15. Struggle over legality in the midnight hour: governing the international state of emergency Kanishka Jayasuriya
16. Inter arma silent leges? Black hole theories of the laws of war C. L. Lim.

Subject Areas: Jurisprudence & general issues [LA], Political science & theory [JPA]