States of Emergency - Centre for Policy Alternatives

the problem of deLinition plagues this approach with the result
that the purported advantage of legally regulating the availability
and extent of emergency power is nulliLied. The substantial
ambiguity and overlap between categories result in the use of
terms “…that makes the choice…mostly a political issue.” 99 This is
clearly visible in the Portuguese scheme mentioned above.
Furthermore, creating a ‘sliding scale of emergency regimes’ may
encourage governments to resort more readily to some states of
emergency, because the perception that they are ‘not so serious’
make them “…more readily accepted by legislatures, courts and
the general public.” 100 The danger of this is that, “This can also act
to condition people to live with some type of emergency. Once
some kind of emergency regime becomes accepted as the normal
way of life, it will be easier for government to ‘upgrade’ to a
higher‐level emergency regime.” 101
3.1.2
Declaration,
Extension
and
Termination
One of the most important lessons of the Roman model is its
framework for the declaration, operation and termination of a
state of emergency, in particular the functional separation
between institutional actors who declare the state of emergency,
and those who exercise power under it. 102
99
Ibid
100
Ibid, pp.45‐46
101
Ibid, p.46
102
Clinton Rossiter (1948) Constitutional
Dictatorship:
Crisis
Government
in
Modern
Democracies
(Princeton: Princeton UP): pp.
297‐306
74