The Rule of Crisis: Crisis Legislation, Emergencies and the Rule of Law

After recent terrorist attacks, French political institutions have been undergoing legislative and constitutional amendments that are part of a specific legal category which could well be termed “crisis laws”. While these laws often share the vocabulary of a “state of exception”, engaging its political and philosophical references, they must yet be distinguished from it. Whereas a “state of exception” interrupts the rule of law in principle, the laws adopted in several countries following terrorist attacks have melded the state of exception into the legal framework. The rule of law is no longer interrupted: the rule of law is modified and the exception becomes the rule. The focus of this conference, which will adopt a comparative point of view, is to question this transformation, not necessarily with the aim to evaluate it, but in order to think it through while drawing attention to the inadaptability of traditional legal and philosophical categories in a new/changing political world.

The full conference programme as well as registration information can be found here.