States of Emergency - Centre for Policy Alternatives

whereby each successive extension of a state of emergency
requires ever increasing legislative majorities until a small
minority becomes capable of halting further extension. 116 A like
approach is adopted in the South African constitution where the
initial declaration requires only a simple majority, but extensions
require the support of a special majority of 60% of legislators. 117
An important principle of the Roman model is the duration of the
state of emergency, which is required to be short‐lived. Thus
comparative systems follow one or both of the techniques
whereby time limits are set on the operation of a declaration
(which is a universal feature), and through extension procedures
which require higher standards of justiLication and approval. 118
Some constitutions also set limits to the number of extensions that
can be made to the initial declaration as well as limit the number
of declarations that can be made within a particular period. The
Sri Lankan constitution also contains some of these features such
as temporal limits on the proclamation and regular legislative
approval. Several other safeguards such as the special majority
required for extension and the limitation on the number of
declarations during a speciLied period have been repealed by the
Tenth Amendment to the constitution. We shall consider these
aspects in greater detail later. 119 78
116
Bruce Ackerman (2004) ‘The
Emergency
Constitution’ 113 Yale
Law
Journal
1029 at p.1047‐1049: “an escalating cascade of supermajorities”
117
Section 37 (2) (b) of the South African Constitution; see for the position in
Sri Lanka prior to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, Chapter 5, infra
118
For e.g. Article 38b of the Israeli Basic Law: The Government; Section 37 of
the South African Constitution; Article 352 (5) of the Indian Constitution
119
Chapter 5, infra