The ethics of emergency powers in liberal democracies (Niccolo Machiavelli, Jean-Jeacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt)

This dissertation develops a new framework for thinking about emergency powers in liberal democracies. Emergency legal provisions that concentrate power and derogate rights when a state is threatened are problematic because essential elements of a liberal state---rule of law and protection of rights---are exactly those which emergency powers overcome. The dominant response, that emergencies are states of exception and emergency powers exceptional powers, is dangerous and inaccurate even if we deny exceptions might be made. Instead, I argue that emergency can be made safer by recognizing that it is saliently continuous with normalcy.; I trace the origins of the norm/exception view from Machiavelli, through Rousseau, Hobbes, Maistre and Schmitt, showing its inherent dangers. I then show how liberalism's capacity to confront the emergency challenge depends on its epistemological grounds. A Lockean liberalism, awake to experience, overcomes antinomies generated by a Kantian rational-deductive confrontation with emergency. Recognizing that law cannot rule on its own and embracing a political ethics of experience, I develop an alternative to the norm/exception framework.; Emergency rights derogations are justifiable not by making exceptions but by countervailing ethical-political values such as order, which come into play without diminishing the force or weight of liberal norms. This ethical-political pluralism is constant. It is not a special feature of emergency. Similarly, conceptualizing emergency through a dichotomy of normal rule of law/exceptional individual rule is misconceived. Effective enablement and constraint in more general terms are what matter. A discussion of the Roman Dictatorship illustrates these continuities between normalcy and emergency.; By puncturing rhetoric and delineating principled boundaries, a clearer ethics of emergency can make emergency powers safer. I illustrate a variety of norms that have animated crisis government historically and recommend principles to aid in future deliberation and institutional design.; In emergencies, there is no need for 'exception,' rights do not lose their force, the values underlying the rule of law do not lose their power. Political leaders may be held to the same standards of moral and institutional accountability to which they are always held in executing their duties. Hence, my arguments aim to make emergency safer for democracy.