1st Edition

States of Exception Law, History, Theory

Edited By Cosmin Cercel, Gian Giacomo Fusco, Simon Lavis Copyright 2020
    228 Pages
    by Routledge

    228 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book addresses the relevance of the state of exception for the analysis of law, while reflecting on the deeper symbolic and jurisprudential significance of the coalescence between law and force.

    The concept of the state of exception has become a central topos in political and legal philosophy as well as in critical theory. The theoretical apparatus of the state of exception sharply captures the uneasy relationship between law, life and politics in the contemporary global setting, while also challenging the comforting narratives that uncritically connect democracy with the tradition of the rule of law. Drawing on critical legal theory, continental jurisprudence, political philosophy and history, this book explores the genealogy of the concept of the state of exception and reflects on its legal embodiment in past and present contexts – including Weimar and Nazi Germany, contemporary Europe and Turkey. In doing so, it explores the disruptive force of the exception for legal and political thought, as it recuperates its contemporary critical potential.

    The book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of jurisprudence, philosophy and critical legal theory.

    Introduction Part 1 Law, theory and the logic of the exception 1. Exception, Fiction, Performativity (Gian Giacomo Fusco) 2. "Through a Glass, Darkly": Law, History and the Frontispiece of the Exception (Cosmin Cercel) 3. The Other Side of the Exception: Sovereignty, Modernity and International Law (Przemysław Tacik) 4. Minor Law: Notes Towards a Revolutionary Jurisprudence (Tormod Otter Johansen) 5. The Exception of the Norm in the Third Reich: Re(reading) the Nazi Constitutional State of Exception (Simon Lavis)  Part 2 Histories of Exception 6. 'Norm' and 'Exception': From the Weimar Republic to the Nazi State Form (Dimitrios Kivotidis) 7. ‘Our Fatherland Has Found Itself on the Verge of an Abyss’:Poland’s 1981 Martial Law, or the Unexpected Appearance of the State of Exception Under Actually Existing Socialism (Rafał Mańko) 8. A State in Anomie: An Analysis of Modern Turkey’s States of Exception (Ceylan Begüm Yıldız) 9. Beyond "the Most Serious Suspension of Rights" of Genoa: Violence, Anomie and Force (of Law) (Sara Raimondi) Afterword: Emergencies, Exceptions, Legalities (David Fraser)

    Biography

    Dr Cosmin Cercel is Assistant Professor in Law at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Towards a Jurisprudence of State Communism: Law and the Failure of Revolution (Routledge: 2017).

    Dr Gian-Giacomo Fusco is Lecturer in Law at the University of Kent.

    Dr Simon Lavis is Lecturer in Law at the Open University.