state of exception

English

Etymology

Calque of German Ausnahmezustand, primarily as used by the German jurist and philosopher Carl Schmitt; popularised in English by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben in the 1990s–2000s.

Noun

state of exception (plural states of exception)

1. (law, philosophy) A condition in which ordinary laws or norms have been suspended by a political authority.
   • 2006, Arthur Versluis, The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism, page 127:

     Out of such rhetoric emerged an American state of exception, and with it, the disturbing outlines of inquisitorial behavior.

   • 2010, Flora Sapio, Sovereign Power and the Law in China, page 252:

     Regardless of how we conceive of them, rights are just abstract entitlements that, given a state of exception, can be suspended at will by the very same states that profess a belief in the universality and inalienability of these rights!

   • 2017, Martin J. Murray, The Urbanism of Exception: The Dynamics of Global City Building in the Twenty-First Century, page 311:

     The progressive normalization of the state of exception has eroded rule-bound procedures that give substance to conventional regulatory regimes.

Related terms

• state of emergency
• state of siege

Translations

suspension of ordinary laws

• French: état d’exception (fr)
• Spanish: estado de excepción