Sovereignty, Emergency, Legality

This book examines law's complex relationship to sovereign power and emergency conditions and places today's responses to emergency in historical and institutional context.

Austin Sarat (Edited by)

9781107629240, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 September 2013

308 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

It is widely recognized that times of national emergency put legality to its greatest test. In such times we rely on sovereign power to rescue us, to hold the danger at bay. Yet that power can and often does threaten the values of legality itself. Sovereignty, Emergency, Legality examines law's complex relationship to sovereign power and emergency conditions. It puts today's responses to emergency in historical and institutional context, reminding readers of the continuities and discontinuities in the ways emergencies are framed and understood at different times and in different situations. And, in all this, it suggests the need to be less abstract in the way we discuss sovereignty, emergency, and legality. This book concentrates on officials and the choices they make in defining, anticipating, and responding to conditions of emergency as well as the impact of their choices on embodied subjects, whether citizen or stranger.

Introduction: toward new conceptions of the relationship of law and sovereignty under conditions of emergency Austin Sarat
1. The 'organic law' of 'ex parte milligan' David Dyzenhaus
2. Comment on 'the 'organic law' of 'ex parte milligan' Tony A. Freyer
3. Emergency, legality, sovereignty: Birmingham, 1963 Patrick O. Gudridge
4. Order in the court Paul Horwitz
5. The banality of emergency: on the time and space of 'political necessity' Leonard C. Feldman
6. Emergencies, body parts and price gouging J. Shahar Dillbary
7. The racial sovereign Sumi Cho and Gil Gott
8. Toward a nonracial sovereign Debra Lyn Bassett
9. Should constitutional democracies redefine emergencies and the legal regimes suitable for them? Michel Rosenfeld
10. Comment on 'should constitutional democracies redefine emergencies and the legal regimes suitable for them?' James Leonard.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Comparative politics [JPB]