States of Emergency - Centre for Policy Alternatives

well as permissible limitations, and in some countries where
domestic institutions are weak in the protection of human rights,
provide a very useful means of accountability and sometimes
enforcement. This issue has come to the forefront in Sri Lanka
following the judgment of the Supreme Court in the Singarasa
Case, which we will discuss in greater detail below. 126
Another, wider but intimately related, legal consequence of a state
of emergency is the expansion of the executive role within the
institutional framework of the State, intensiLied by the
operationalisation of extraordinary powers. As Rossiter notes,
“Crisis government is primarily and often exclusively the business
of presidents and prime ministers.” 127 One important dimension of
this expansion is the conferment of law‐making powers on the
executive, which would otherwise be unavailable. Most democratic
constitutions offset this conferral through procedural mechanisms
such as legislative approval or consultation requirements and time
limits of validity. Thus, some constitutions provide that Parliament
must immediately be summoned upon the declaration of a state of
emergency, 128 or that the legislature may not be dissolved, 129 or
that its term of ofLice be extended during the currency of a state of
emergency. 130
126
See Chapter 6, infra
127
Rossiter (1948), op cit., pp.288‐290; see also Edward S. Corwin (1947)
Total
War
and
the
Constitution
(New York: Knopf): pp.172‐179; Arthur
S. Miller (1978) ‘Constitutional
Law:
Crisis
Government
becomes
the
Norm’
39 Ohio
State
Law
Journal
736 at pp.738‐741
128
Article155 (4) of the Sri Lankan Constitution
129
Articles 16, 89 of the French Constitution; Article 289 of the
Portuguese Constitution; Articles 169, 116 (5) of the Spanish Constitution
130
Article115h of the German Basic Law
83