Today we are hosting our latest ISSE Office Hours—our ongoing series of conversations with readers, members of our research community, and invited experts—focused on the evolving landscape of executive authority across legal, political, and institutional domains, and the ways in which exceptional powers are invoked, adapted, and embedded within ordinary governance.

We are pleased to announce that today’s discussion will be led by our very own ISSE Senior Fellows Dr. Sam Mace and Paul Shaya, and will focus on the evolving use of emergency powers in the Middle East in light of the ongoing war. The discussion will examine dynamics across Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon, drawn from recent ISSE analysis, while also considering additional country-specific, regional, and global ripple effects, emanating from the current conflict. We expect this to be a timely and wide-ranging conversation and look forward to engaging our community on all of the latest developments.

Please Join Us

Friday, April 17 · 11:00 – 12:00am

Time zone: Eastern

Google Meet joining info

Video call link: https://meet.google.com/jgq-kbwc-bpu

Or dial: ‪(US) +1 402-796-1124‬ PIN: ‪665 820 587‬#

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April 13, 2026

Dear Readers,

This issue centers on the expanding role of emergency powers across multiple domains of governance, from active conflict zones to established constitutional systems. Developments tied to the ongoing US/Israel–Iran war illustrate how crisis conditions can accelerate institutional change, while parallel dynamics in the United States and Europe show how similar logics are taking shape outside of formally declared emergencies.

Across these contexts, a consistent pattern emerges: exceptional authority is increasingly embedded through repetition, legal adaptation, and administrative practice. Whether through legislative processes under reduced scrutiny, executive interpretation of statutory limits, or the gradual weakening of oversight mechanisms, the practical boundaries of governance continue to shift.

At the same time, the materials in this issue highlight the importance of legal frameworks, historical experience, and scholarly analysis in understanding these developments. Together, they point to a central ISSE concern: the evolution of emergency power is often incremental, shaping governance not only in moments of crisis, but in the structures that persist long after.

Ed Bogan

Founder, Institute for the Study of States of Exception

ISSE Announcements

• Upcoming ISSE Office Hours (April 17, 11:00 a.m. Eastern): We are pleased to announce our next “Office Hours” conversation will be led by our very own ISSE Senior Fellows Dr. Sam Mace and Paul Shaya, and will focus on the evolving use of emergency powers in the Middle East in light of the ongoing war. The discussion will examine dynamics across Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon, drawn from recent ISSE analysis, while also considering additional country-specific, regional, and global ripple effects, emanating from the current conflict. We expect this to be a timely and wide-ranging conversation and look forward to engaging our community on all of the latest developments.

Global Events

A curated selection of recent developments involving emergency powers and constitutional governance.

• US Allies in the Middle East Use Emergency Powers During Iran Conflict (Paul Shaya, Senior Fellow, ISSE, April 2026). This article examines how the US/Israel–Iran war is reshaping governance across the Middle East through the expanded use of emergency powers in Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. It shows how each country is leveraging crisis conditions to pursue political and institutional changes, from reduced legislative scrutiny in Israel to tightened civic restrictions in Jordan and efforts to reassert state authority in Lebanon. Together, the cases highlight how emergency environments can enable lasting shifts in governance that extend well beyond immediate security needs.

• Hungary’s Election as Baseline: Tracking a System of Embedded Exceptionality (ISSE Analysis, April 2026). This article examines Hungary’s 2026 election as a test case for a political system shaped by the sustained integration of emergency powers under Viktor Orbán. Drawing on the concept of “exceptionality,” it shows how authorities expanded during successive crises have persisted and become embedded within ordinary governance. The analysis highlights how electoral processes continue within a reconfigured legal and political environment, offering insight into how such systems function and evolve over time.

• U.S. Impeachment Filing Highlights Emergency Powers as a Core Constitutional Concern in the United States (ISSE Analysis, April 2026). This article examines a new impeachment filing that places emergency powers at the center of a constitutional dispute over executive authority. It analyzes allegations that such authorities have been used to bypass congressional processes and expand presidential reach, with particular focus on their practical invocation and application. The piece situates these claims within the broader framework of U.S. emergency powers law, assessing their implications for institutional balance.

• Emergency by Presidential Memorandum: Appropriations Flexibility Under Shutdown Conditions - ISSE Explainer (ISSE Analysis, April 2026). This article analyzes two recent White House memoranda issued during the DHS shutdown that rely on a “reasonable and logical nexus” standard to justify compensating employees under existing appropriations law. It shows how the directives operate at the boundary of statutory limits, using emergency framing to expand interpretive flexibility without formally invoking emergency powers or overriding legal constraints. The piece highlights how this form of constrained executive improvisation may, if repeated, gradually reshape the practical operation of appropriations law by normalizing emergency-inflected interpretation during periods of political deadlock.

• United States: NYC Bar Report Raises Alarm Over Expanding Executive Power and Eroding Constraints (ISSE Analysis, April 2026). This article analyzes a March 2026 report by the New York City Bar Association, which finds that executive overreach in the United States has evolved from episodic boundary-testing into a structured pattern of governance. It highlights how coercive state actions increasingly replicate the functional attributes of emergency power (such as speed, opacity, and reduced safeguards) without formal invocation, while institutional constraints from courts and Congress weaken unevenly. The report underscores a broader ISSE concern: the emergence of undeclared exceptionalism, where emergency-style practices become embedded in ordinary governance, gradually reshaping the meaning and application of legal limits.

Additional Resources

Selected commentary and analysis relevant to the evolving law of emergency powers.

• Three Hundred Habeas Cases in Which the (U.S.) Government Has Defied Court Orders - Lawfare (ISSE Analysis, April 2026). This article analyzes a Lawfare-compiled dataset of more than 300 U.S. immigration habeas cases, revealing recurring patterns of delayed compliance with court orders, including unauthorized transfers and prolonged detention. While courts ultimately secure adherence to legal rulings, the findings show that enforcement often requires repeated judicial intervention, placing strain on oversight mechanisms. The analysis highlights how prolonged reliance on emergency authorities can reshape the practical operation of legality, raising concerns about the normalization of partial or delayed compliance within routine governance.

Academic Literature

Recent scholarship examining the theory and practice of emergency governance.

• Constitutionalism and war: from martial law to “peace” through a transitional period (Maksym Bondar, NaUKMA Research Papers. Law, March 2026). This paper examines how constitutionalism adapts under extraordinary conditions such as martial law, using Ukraine as a central case for understanding governance during and after crisis. It argues that constitutional systems retain their core identity, even as the relative weight of principles shifts toward public safety and state stability, allowing for proportionate restrictions on rights. The piece proposes a transitional legal regime between emergency rule and peacetime governance as a structured pathway for restoring constitutional normalcy after crisis.

• A Case Against Mass Deportation: The Japanese American Internment Camps and Recent Treatment of Korematsu (Isaac Bloch, UC Law Journal, April 2026). This paper examines how courts have engaged with Korematsu v. United States in the context of contemporary immigration enforcement, particularly following its repudiation in Trump v. Hawaii. It explores how the legacy of Japanese American internment informs current legal debates, highlighting parallels in rhetoric and the expansion of executive authority over non-citizens. The analysis highlights the role of negative precedent in reinforcing due process protections and calls for heightened judicial scrutiny of emergency powers in immigration contexts.

• Medical populism and local governments during the COVID-19 pandemic (Gideon Lasco, Ainsley Kenzo Tai Co, Harold Ivan Sy Hui, and Vincen Gregory Yu, Discover Public Health, March 2026). This paper examines how subnational political actors in the Philippines deployed “medical populism” during the COVID-19 pandemic to assert authority and challenge national policies. Case studies show how crisis conditions were leveraged to advance competing knowledge claims and reshape public discourse. The analysis highlights how emergency contexts can amplify political fragmentation, enabling local actors to influence governance and public health responses alongside, or in opposition to, central authorities.

• The Impact of Exceptional Governance Measures on Democracy and Legal System (Attila Antal, ELTE Law Journal, July 2025). This paper explores the theoretical and historical foundations of exceptional power, focusing on how executive authority expands during periods of crisis within constitutional democracies. It traces the evolution of ideas surrounding constitutional dictatorship and argues that modern governance has increasingly adopted a permanent crisis-management orientation. The analysis raises concerns about the impact of exceptional governance on democratic systems and examines potential mechanisms for constraining executive overreach in states of exception.

About ISSE

The Institute for the Study of States of Exception tracks and analyzes the use and misuse of emergency powers around the world, providing research and analysis on how exceptional authority shapes modern governance.

March 21, 2026

Dear Readers,

This week’s issue examines a pattern becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: the migration of emergency powers from temporary responses into enduring structures of governance. Across contexts ranging from Trinidad and Tobago and Georgia to Myanmar and the United Kingdom, exceptional authorities are no longer confined to moments of acute crisis, but are shaping the routine exercise of political power.

The articles highlight different pathways through which this occurs—through repeated reactivation of emergency measures, through legislative and procedural erosion of oversight, and through the gradual embedding of exceptional practices within ordinary institutions. At the same time, cases like Canada demonstrate that this trajectory is not inevitable, and that legal constraints can still be meaningfully asserted.

Taken together, this issue reinforces a central ISSE concern: that the most consequential developments are not the invocation of emergency itself, but the processes through which it is normalized into governance. The question, increasingly, is not when the emergency ends, but what remains once it does.

Ed Bogan

Founder, Institute for the Study of States of Exception

ISSE Announcements

• ISSE Office Hours (March 19): We were pleased to host Steptoe partner and Columbia School of Law lecturer Michel Paradis for a wide-ranging discussion on the ongoing Anthropic litigation and its broader implications for how law, technology, and emergency-like reasoning intersect. The lively conversation highlighted why developments like this are directly relevant to ISSE’s core inquiry into the expansion and normalization of exceptional authority.

• Programs in Development: Behind the scenes, ISSE continues to build out its three core programmatic pillars. Our academic scholarship, legal action, and global reporting and analytic initiatives, will serve as the foundation for much of our in-house production. We look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks about how these programs will operate and how you can engage with them.

Global Events

A curated selection of recent developments involving emergency powers and constitutional governance.

• Trinidad and Tobago declares new state of emergency over persistent violent crime, then extends it (Anselm Gibbs, the Associated Press, March 2026). Trinidad and Tobago declared a new state of emergency on March 3, 2026, just weeks after the previous one ended, citing credible threats of attacks on law enforcement and ongoing gang-related violence. The measure, which had an initial duration of up to 15 days, grants expanded powers such as warrantless arrests and searches, and was subsequently extended for three months following parliamentary approval on March 13. With the country having spent most of the past year under emergency rule, the case highlights the increasing normalization of extraordinary powers in response to persistent security challenges.

• Nine times under emergency: A history of Trinidad and Tobago’s State of Emergency declarations: 1970-2026… (Khamarie Rodriguez, Daily Express, March 2026). This article traces the historical use of states of emergency in Trinidad and Tobago, noting that the 2026 declaration marks the ninth since independence and reflects a shift in how these powers are deployed. Once reserved for extraordinary crises such as political unrest or attempted coups, emergency measures are now increasingly used to address persistent issues like crime and gang violence. The pattern illustrates a broader evolution in which exceptional powers, originally designed for rare contingencies, are becoming more routinely integrated into governance.

• Myanmar and the Institutionalization of Exception: Governance Five Years After the 2021 Coup (ISSE, March 2026). This analysis examines Myanmar five years after the 2021 coup, arguing that what began as a constitutionally framed state of emergency has evolved into an enduring system of governance shaped by the normalization of exceptional power. It traces how emergency authority has been extended, embedded across institutions, and ultimately transformed into a default mode of rule, even as competing claims to legitimacy leave sovereignty fragmented and unresolved. For ISSE, Myanmar represents a critical case in which the distinction between ordinary and exceptional governance collapses, raising the question of whether an “exit” from emergency remains meaningful once the exception has become the governing order.

Additional Resources

Selected commentary and analysis relevant to the evolving law of emergency powers.

• U.S. Helsinki Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe presses Georgia over emergency-style crackdowns (U.S. Helsinki Commission, March 2026). A bipartisan statement from the U.S. Helsinki Commission on March 18, 2026, condemned Georgia’s use of emergency-style legislation to suppress opposition and undermine democratic institutions, citing findings from an OSCE Moscow Mechanism report. The report documents patterns of abusive prosecutions, violence against protesters and journalists, and widespread impunity, prompting U.S. lawmakers to call for coordinated sanctions with European partners. The episode highlights growing international concern that emergency-like legal tools are being systematically used to consolidate political control, blurring the line between crisis response and authoritarian governance.

• Do states of emergency in the Caribbean suppress gang violence or spread it? The cases of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (Sandra Pellegrini, The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, September 2025). This report examines states of emergency in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, finding that while they may produce short-term reductions in violence, they are largely ineffective in addressing gang activity over the long term. It highlights how criminal networks adapt through fragmentation, mobility, and leadership succession, often leading to the displacement rather than elimination of violence. The analysis also illuminates the broader costs of emergency measures, including increased police abuses and the erosion of public trust, raising questions about their sustainability as a governance tool.

• Canadian Courts Are Holding the Line on National Emergency Powers (Anvesh Jain, Lawfare, March 2026). This article situates the Americas within a growing “Hemisphere of Exceptions,” where governments increasingly rely on emergency powers as routine tools of governance to manage instability and bypass legislative constraints. Against this trend, it highlights Canada as a notable outlier, where the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that the 2022 invocation of the Emergencies Act was unlawful and exceeded statutory authority. The decision shows that the potential for judicial review to reassert legal limits on executive power, demonstrating that the normalization of emergency governance is neither inevitable nor uncontested.

Academic Literature

Recent scholarship examining the theory and practice of emergency governance.

• Backdoor Executive Empowerment (Daniella Lock, Legal Studies Journal, September 2025). This article examines how recent UK legislation has expanded executive authority while weakening human rights protections, often through procedural mechanisms that marginalize parliamentary scrutiny rather than through overt constitutional change. It argues that between 2021 and 2023, a series of laws enabled “backdoor” executive empowerment, reflecting broader trends of diminished accountability and raising concerns about democratic erosion. For ISSE, the piece highlights how dynamics analogous to the state of exception can emerge without formal emergency declarations, as incremental procedural practices normalize reduced oversight and reshape the balance of power within democratic systems.

• French dual constitutionalism, Tocqueville and Algeria: liberal authoritarianism as constitutional technique of liberal imperialism (Eugénie Mérieu, European Open Law Journal, March 2026). This article argues that “liberal authoritarianism” operates through a form of dual constitutionalism, in which liberal legal orders coexist with institutionalized states of exception that suspend rights across specific territories, populations, or moments. Focusing on colonial Algeria under the French Third Republic, it shows how emergency powers enabled a legalized dictatorship that facilitated market creation through expropriation, forced labor, and coercive restructuring of local economic systems. The analysis demonstrates how techniques developed in colonial contexts migrated back to the metropole, illustrating how exceptional governance can become embedded within, and ultimately reshape, liberal constitutional orders.

• Capturing the minds: The role of child deportation in maintaining Russian authority over Ukraine’s occupied territories (Dr. Jade McGlynn and Anastasiia Romaniuk, European Journal of International Security, March 2026). This article examines Russia’s systematic deportation of Ukrainian children as a form of “politicised captivity,” in which the state exerts long-term control over a vulnerable population to achieve coercive, demographic, and ideological objectives. Drawing on biopolitics and the state of exception, it shows how legal, administrative, and institutional mechanisms, from filtration processes to adoption policies, are used to reshape identity, disrupt national continuity, and consolidate authority in occupied territories. For ISSE, the piece offers a powerful case study of how exceptional wartime practices are normalized into enduring systems of governance, transforming coercion into administratively routinized rule that alters the environment.

• Rethinking crisis management - Technocracy, globalism, and the rise of emergenciocracy (Niccolò Bertuzzi, Social Sciences & Humanities Open Journal, February 2026). This article introduces the concept of “emergenciocracy,” describing a mode of governance in which emergencies become normalized as both a structural and rhetorical tool for managing the modern “polycrisis.” It argues that the growing reliance on technocratic expertise and centralized decision-making, particularly in areas like climate and energy, consolidates authority while bypassing democratic deliberation and potentially exacerbating inequality. The piece also highlights the paradoxical role of grassroots movements, whose use of emergency framing may unintentionally reinforce the very top-down governance structures they seek to challenge.

• State Power and the Spectacle of Death: Violence, Impunity and Martyrdom in Fatima Bhutto’s Memoir “The Hour of the Wolf” (Mudassar Javed Baryar and Prof. Dr. Nailah Riaz, Qualitative Journal for Social Studies, March 2026). This article analyzes state violence and institutional impunity in Pakistan through Fatima Bhutto’s memoir The Hour of the Wolf, arguing that political violence operates not as a breakdown of governance but as one of its recurring modalities. It introduces the “Exception-Martyrdom Apparatus,” combining Agamben’s state of exception with Butler’s theory of grievability to show how law is suspended, accountability deferred, and death reframed through narratives of martyrdom. By treating the memoir as a counter-archive, the piece demonstrates how impunity is systematically produced and sustained, recasting political violence as an embedded feature of state power rather than an aberration.

Podcasts and Videos

Discussions and interviews exploring the legal and political dynamics of exceptional authority.

• Statement from Trinidad and Tobago Attorney General John Jeremie SC on the State of Emergency (Trinidad and Tobago Television, March 2026). Trinidad and Tobago reimposed a state of emergency on March 3, 2026, in response to renewed gang violence and intelligence warning of imminent coordinated attacks, following an earlier emergency that had temporarily reduced crime. Government officials justified the move as necessary to address threats beyond the reach of ordinary law enforcement, while also acknowledging both the successes and limits of prior emergency measures and legislative reforms. The episode highlights a central ISSE concern: the cyclical reactivation of emergency powers, where temporary authorities risk becoming embedded in the routine practices of governance.

About ISSE

The Institute for the Study of States of Exception tracks and analyzes the use and misuse of emergency powers around the world, providing research and analysis on how exceptional authority shapes modern governance.

Tomorrow, we will host our latest ISSE Office Hours—our ongoing series of conversations with readers, members of our research community, and invited experts—focused on the evolving landscape of executive authority across legal, political, and institutional domains, and the ways in which exceptional powers are invoked, adapted, and embedded within ordinary governance.

We are pleased to be joined by Michel Paradis, a lawyer at Steptoe LLP, with extensive experience in appellate litigation, technology law, and international and national security law. Michel also teaches at Columbia University, including courses on national security law, international law, and constitutional law, and a new course called “Law of Artificial Intelligence.” Michel’s work spans both practice and scholarship, and he has a longstanding interest in the legal and theoretical foundations of emergency powers. He is also the author of Last Mission to Tokyo, on war crimes prosecutions in the Pacific after World War II, and a forthcoming biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The Situation

Over the past several weeks, the U.S. Department of Defense has taken the extraordinary step of designating the AI company Anthropic as a “supply-chain risk,” effectively banning its systems from use across defense networks and initiating a phased removal from sensitive government environments. That designation is now being challenged in court.

The dispute reportedly arose after Anthropic declined to modify certain safeguards on its models—limitations related to surveillance and autonomous military use—prompting escalating pressure from the government. Among the measures reportedly considered were invocation of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to compel cooperation, before ultimately turning to the supply-chain designation.

While neither of these authorities is formally an “emergency power” in the legal sense, both operate within a familiar logic: urgency, national security necessity, and expanded executive discretion over private-sector activity.

Why This Matters

For ISSE, this episode raises a set of questions that sit squarely within our core inquiry:

• When does a permanent national-security authority begin to function like an emergency power?

• Are we witnessing the expansion of “emergency-like” governance tools into domains—such as AI—previously governed by market and regulatory norms?

• What happens when the state seeks to shape or compel the development of foundational technologies in the name of national security?

• And critically: who decides the permissible uses of such technologies—the state, the courts, or the companies themselves?

The Defense Production Act, though not tied to a declared emergency, has historically been deployed in moments of perceived crisis or strategic urgency. Similarly, supply-chain risk designations—once primarily associated with foreign adversary technologies—are now being applied in ways that extend into domestic technological ecosystems.

Taken together, these developments suggest a possible shift: Not the declaration of a formal state of exception, but the diffusion of exceptional logic across ordinary governance tools.

Discussion with Michel Paradis

In this session, we will explore both the legal dimensions of the Anthropic litigation and the broader structural implications for executive authority.

With Michel, we will examine:

• The legal basis and vulnerabilities of the supply-chain risk designation

• The scope and limits of the Defense Production Act in emerging technology contexts

• How courts may approach disputes involving national security and private AI systems

• The extent to which these tools reflect a broader migration of exceptional powers into ordinary regulatory frameworks

We are particularly interested in bridging doctrinal analysis with theoretical perspectives—including those that have shaped ISSE’s work on the normalization of emergency powers.

Please Join Us

Thursday, March 19

2:00 PM Eastern Time

Video call link: https://meet.google.com/zkx-nmmp-zqy

Or dial: ‪(US) +1 478-308-5145‬ PIN: ‪889 071 625‬#

Or use: https://tel.meet/zkx-nmmp-zqy?pin=8806590102193

At ISSE, we are interested not only in moments where emergency powers are explicitly invoked, but also in the quieter ways in which their logic persists, adapts, and embeds itself within the ordinary architecture of governance.

This discussion offers an opportunity to examine one such moment as it unfolds in real time.

March 5, 2026

Dear Readers,

This edition brings together several developments that shed light on how emergency powers are being defined, challenged, and institutionalized across contemporary political systems. In the United States, the Supreme Court’s decision limiting the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs clarifies an important statutory boundary on executive authority while leaving broader questions about the structure of emergency governance unresolved. Internationally, South Korea’s sentencing of former president Yoon Suk Yeol following his attempted use of martial law and Guatemala’s recent state of siege in response to gang violence illustrate the varied ways constitutional systems confront the exercise of extraordinary power in moments of crisis. We also highlight new academic research, commentary, and media discussions that contribute to the Institute’s continuing effort to map the evolving legal and political landscape of emergency governance worldwide.

Ed Bogan

Founder, Institute for the Study of States of Exception

ISSE Announcements

• We have successfully transitioned our Under Exception newsletter series to Substack. In the months ahead, readers can expect expanded original analysis from ISSE, along with a range of forthcoming proprietary research products. We will also continue curating high-quality third-party material that we believe will be valuable to our community. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions as we continue developing this platform into a more interactive space for discussion and engagement.

• Our next ISSE Office Hours is scheduled for Thursday, March 19, 2026. Additional details, including the discussion topic and time, will be shared next week. If there are topics you would like us to address in future sessions, please let us know.

Global Events

A curated selection of recent developments involving emergency powers and constitutional governance.

• Emergency Tariffs and the Supreme Court: The IEEPA Decision (updated, ISSE, February 2026). The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to impose tariffs, rejecting the administration’s use of the statute to justify sweeping trade measures. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts held that while IEEPA permits broad regulation of economic transactions during national emergencies, the power to levy tariffs remains constitutionally vested in Congress and cannot be inferred from general statutory language. The Court also applied the Major Questions Doctrine to emergency powers in the foreign affairs context, signaling that Congress must clearly authorize delegations of economic authority of such magnitude.

• The IEEPA Decision and the Architecture of Emergency Governance: A Partial Check on Executive Power - ISSE Analysis (ISSE, February 2026). The Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump blocks the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs, drawing an important statutory boundary around executive emergency authority. But the ruling turns on textual limits, not on scrutiny of the underlying emergency itself. As a result, while the Court prevented one expansion of presidential power, it left intact the broader architecture through which emergency declarations can accumulate authority over time. The case illustrates a central tension in contemporary governance: judicial intervention may constrain specific statutory overreach, even as the structural normalization of emergency power continues.

• Former South Korea President sentenced to life in prison (Jurist News, February 2026). Former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to life imprisonment after a Seoul court found him guilty of leading an insurrection tied to his December 3, 2024 declaration of martial law. The court ruled that his deployment of military and police forces against the National Assembly, reportedly including orders to blockade parliament and detain senior political leaders, constituted an unlawful attempt to subvert the constitutional order. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, but the court imposed life imprisonment with hard labor, marking one of the most consequential judicial rebukes of executive overreach in South Korea’s democratic history.

• Guatemala’s 2026 State of Siege: Crisis, Authority, and the Boundaries of the Ordinary - ISSE Analysis (ISSE, February 2026). In January 2026, Guatemala declared a 30-day state of siege following prison riots and coordinated attacks linked to the transnational gang Barrio 18 that left 11 police officers dead. Ratified by Congress, the emergency temporarily expanded police and military authority before transitioning into a nationwide state of prevention once the siege expired. Government officials reported significant security gains, including mass arrests, major drug seizures, and reductions in extortion and homicide. This analysis examines the episode through the lens of the state of exception, exploring how constitutional democracies authorize extraordinary powers in moments of crisis and how such measures, though formally temporary, can reshape the boundary between emergency authority and ordinary law.

Additional Resources

Selected commentary and analysis relevant to the evolving law of emergency powers.

• The Hidden Nondelegation Issue Raised by Trump v. Slaughter (Lawfare, February 2026). The Supreme Court’s consideration of Trump v. Slaughter raises questions that extend beyond the immediate issue of agency removal protections. In a Lawfare article entitled The Hidden Nondelegation Issue Raised by Trump v. Slaughter, Michael R. Dreeben explores whether overturning Humphrey’s Executor might revive limits on congressional delegation as a counterbalance to expanded presidential authority. Building on Dreeben’s analysis, ISSE examines how weakening agency independence could reshape the institutional architecture through which emergency powers are exercised.

Academic Literature

Recent scholarship examining the theory and practice of emergency governance.

• The Political Economy of Emergency: Postcolonialism, Crisis Governance and Decolonial Alternatives (Hope Johnson, Journal of Law and Society, February 2026). This article examines how the Horn of Africa is persistently framed through narratives of crisis and emergency that shape both international policy and regional governance. Drawing on postcolonial theory and case studies of Somalia and South Sudan, the author argues that these crisis narratives can obscure deeper structural problems while reinforcing cycles of dependency and external intervention rooted in colonial legacies. The article ultimately calls for rethinking governance beyond the language of perpetual emergency, advocating approaches grounded in African political traditions that prioritize local sovereignty and sustainable autonomy.

Podcasts and Videos

Discussions and interviews exploring the legal and political dynamics of exceptional authority.

• Supreme Court Rules Trump’s Tariffs Unlawful Under IEEPA (National Constitution Center, February 2026). On February 20, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the President to impose tariffs under a declaration of economic emergency, rejecting President Trump’s sweeping tariff measures in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and a consolidated case. While the Justices agreed that IEEPA does not confer tariff authority, they differed over the reasoning and implications of the decision. In this National Constitution Center podcast, constitutional scholars Zachary Shemtob and Ilya Somin discuss the ruling and what it may signal about the future limits of presidential emergency power.

• Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol handed life sentence — but spared death penalty (Channel 4 News, UK). Former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to life imprisonment after a failed six-hour declaration of martial law in December 2024 led to his conviction for insurrection. Although martial law is constitutionally permitted under certain emergency conditions, his attempt to deploy it in response to domestic political pressures triggered deep national controversy and polarization. The subsequent arrest, prosecution, and sentencing through established legal processes provide a striking case study of how emergency powers can be invoked, contested, and ultimately constrained within a constitutional system.

ISSE in the News

Recent interviews, commentary, and appearances involving the Institute.

• Why Emergency Powers Are Democracy’s Stress Test (The Recursive, December 2025). In this interview with journalist Teodora Atanasova of The Recursive, ISSE Founder and Governing Board Chair Ed Bogan discusses the growing global reliance on emergency powers and the risks they pose to democratic governance. While most constitutions permit temporary emergency measures to respond to crises, Bogan warns that such authorities are increasingly used to consolidate power, suppress dissent, and weaken democratic accountability. The conversation also introduces the mission of ISSE, which examines how exceptional powers migrate into ordinary governance and reshape the boundaries of constitutional authority.

• ISSE discussed with Adam Kinzinger (Adam Kinzinger podcast, February 2026). In this February 2026 podcast discussion with Adam Kinzinger entitled “Former CIA Ops Chief on Ukraine, Munich, and the U.S. Europe Shift,” ISSE’s Ed Bogan talks about a range of topics including what he saw and heard at the 2026 Munich Security Conference, the current trajectory for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and of course, ISSE.

About ISSE

The Institute for the Study of States of Exception tracks and analyzes the use and misuse of emergency powers around the world, providing research and analysis on how exceptional authority shapes modern governance.

It is with great excitement and renewed purpose that we bring the Institute for the Study of States of Exception (ISSE), a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit, to Substack.

For those who have followed our work, thank you. For those discovering ISSE for the first time, welcome. We are building a global community focused on one of the defining governance challenges of our time: the misuse and weaponization of emergency powers within constitutional systems.

Why Substack — and Why Now

Emergency powers are designed to be temporary. What happens when they are not?

ISSE was founded in response to a development that is no longer episodic, but patterned: the strategic expansion of executive authority under the banner of crisis.

Our website remains our principal research and archival hub. Substack allows us to bring our research and analysis into a more immediate and interactive public forum.

This is not a change in mission. It is an expansion of reach at a moment when the subject demands sustained scrutiny.

Why We Exist

States of exception are not inherently anti-democratic. Constitutional systems provide mechanisms for temporary departures from ordinary legal frameworks during genuine emergencies.

The concern lies in how those mechanisms evolve.

Across constitutional democracies, emergency powers are increasingly invoked in ways that shift the balance of authority more permanently toward the executive. Crises — whether genuine, exaggerated, or strategically framed — can become opportunities to concentrate power, limit oversight, and weaken institutions designed to provide constraint.

This process is rarely sudden or dramatic. It unfolds through extensions, technical revisions, and “temporary” measures that remain in place long after the immediate crisis has passed. At that point, courts defer more readily, legislatures play a smaller role, and authorities granted for exceptional moments begin to shape ordinary governance.

What begins as exception then risks becoming a permanent feature.

What We Do

ISSE examines how emergency powers are designed, justified, extended, and normalized — and under what conditions they serve legitimate public need or entrench shifts in institutional power.

We bring together academic scholarship across law, political science, philosophy, and history, while at the same time engaging directly those who operate within these systems — policy practitioners, judges, lawyers, journalists, individuals directly affected by emergency governance, and concerned citizens like you. This intersection of theory and practice allows us to analyze not only formal declarations, but the structural conditions under which temporary authorities become more enduring imbalances.

Through this work, we seek not only to clarify institutional fault lines and illuminate comparative lessons, but also to identify the legal and structural safeguards that can impede democratic backsliding while preserving legitimate emergency authority.

The Stakes

Democratic systems are shaped by how crises are managed. When emergency authorities are weaponized or normalized, institutional equilibrium shifts. The vocabulary of necessity expands, and the threshold for extraordinary measures lowers.

ISSE exists to study these developments with clarity and discipline: to distinguish legitimate necessity from opportunistic expansion, to map how emergency governance evolves, and to strengthen the intellectual foundations of democratic resilience under strain.

If this resonates with you, we invite you to follow our work, join the conversation, and share our Substack with others.

If you are able, consider supporting ISSE’s efforts or contributing your expertise to this growing international community.

We look forward to building this forum with you.

Ed Bogan
Founder/Board Chair
Institute for the Study of States of Exception

UNDER EXCEPTION

It’s closer than you think.

ISSUE 07

February 13, 2026

Dear Readers,

These materials trace how emergency governance is no longer episodic but increasingly routine, spanning contemporary U.S. executive practice, Latin American security regimes, and historical European precedents.

The global events highlight how repeated emergency framing—whether through migration, sanctions, or national security—can shift major policy choices into exceptional legal terrain with weakened oversight.

The academic literature deepens this picture by showing how prolonged emergencies can deliver short-term order or security while steadily eroding civil liberties, democratic legitimacy, and the boundary between law and force.

The books and reviews situate these developments within a longer theoretical and historical arc, emphasizing how exceptions tend to harden into governing paradigms rather than dissolve once crises pass.

Across all sections, the unifying warning is that the normalization of emergency power poses a structural challenge to accountability, rights, and the rule of law—even when exercised through ostensibly legal means.

Ed Bogan

Founder, Institute for the Study of States of Exception

ISSE ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Upcoming Office Hours: Law and the Exception: Towards a New Paradigm: The next ISSE Office Hours session will take place at 1300 Eastern Time on Thursday, February 19, 2026. Join us for a special session with Gian Giacomo Fusco and Przemysław Tacik, authors of Law and the Exception: Towards a New Paradigm (Routledge, 2025). Fusco and Tacik propose a paradigm shift in how we understand states of exception, arguing that exceptionality now extends well beyond formal emergency declarations—as the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated, legal systems can disguise the exceptional as the normal. Don't miss this conversation about the hidden authoritarian drives within liberal constitutionalism and why rethinking the boundaries of emergency powers matters more than ever.
  
  To join the Office Hours mailing list, sign up at https://www.statesofexception.org/officehours. We will send the Google Meet meeting details to all list members in advance of the meeting. As always, please feel free to send any suggestions for Office Hours discussion topics to officehours@statesofexception.org.

GLOBAL EVENTS

• ISSE Explainer: The 2026 U.S. National Emergency Declaration on Cuba (ISSE, January 2026). On January 29, 2026, Donald J. Trump issued an executive order declaring a national emergency regarding Cuba and invoking NEA/IEEPA authorities to create a tariff mechanism that can penalize countries that directly or indirectly supply oil to Cuba. ISSE’s explainer underscores that this is emergency economic power used as extraterritorial coercion—and that its significance lies not only in the Cuba policy itself, but in the broader pattern of serial emergency declarations becoming routine tools of governance.

• 2025: Trump’s year of ‘emergency’, ‘invasion’ and ‘narcoterrorism’ (Al Jazeera, December 2025). This piece reviews Donald Trump’s repeated use of “emergency” framing in 2025—from a border “invasion” to “narcoterrorism”—to support expansive assertions of executive authority across immigration, trade, and security policy. It presents this emergency rhetoric as a high-stakes legal and political strategy that can move major policy decisions into exceptional terrain and strain ordinary checks and accountability.

ACADEMIC LITERATURE

• Bukele’s Leadership: Transforming El Salvador Through Iron Fist Policies and Social Media Power” (Dananjaya, 2025). Research by Muhammad Praditya Dananjaya connects El Salvador’s prolonged “state of exception” under Nayib Bukele—alongside institutions like CECOT—to steep drops in violence alongside mounting civil-liberties and rule-of-law concerns. The article also argues that Bukele’s social-media “digital populism” shifts legitimacy from democratic process to performance, helping normalize exceptional governance.

• An Overview of Federal Emergency Powers (New York University Journal of Law & Liberty, July 2022). Patrick J. D. Griffin’s article contends that the U.S. Constitution is best read as permitting broad, flexible federal emergency power, with the most meaningful limits coming from structural checks like separation of powers and the political process. He then flags weaknesses in the statutory emergency framework that can leave extraordinary authority under-constrained in practice.

• The “Right” Side of the Law: State of Siege and the Rise of Fascism in Interwar Romania (Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies, January 2013). In this article, Cosmin Sebastian Cercel links the post–World War I “state of siege” in Romania to the rise of fascist politics, challenging the idea that fascism’s appeal was primarily “revolutionary” rather than legally mediated. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben and Walter Benjamin, he shows how emergency rule can reorganize the boundary between law and force in ways that make authoritarian governance feel lawful.

• The Right to Freedom of Expression of Political Views in the Context of Armed Conflict: Current Human Rights Challenges (Law and Society, January 2025). Research by Olha Balynska and Tetiana Slinko uses Ukraine under martial law to examine how wartime “security” restrictions can narrow political expression, from media blocking to heightened risks for journalists. Grounded in ICCPR Article 19 and ECHR Article 10, the article argues for clearer procedures and stronger independent oversight to keep emergency limits proportionate and accountable.

THE BOOKSHELF

• States of Exception: Theory and Practice (Autografia, April 2025). Edited by Antonio Gasparetto Júnior, this volume offers a cross-disciplinary guide to “states of exception,” tracing the concept’s historical development and the ways crisis governance can slip into enduring practices that suspend rights and strain the rule of law. It brings together perspectives from politics, law, history, philosophy, and sociology to clarify the term’s historiography and its contemporary relevance—and the full text is available online.

• Book Review by Vik Kanwar: State of Exception by Giorgio Agamben (International Journal of Constitutional Law, July 2006). Kanwar presents State of Exception as a stark warning that “exceptional” measures can become the new normal, and he reads Agamben’s provocation as ethically serious even when it relies on hyperbole and paradox. The review spotlights three pressure points: Agamben’s historical claim about iustitium as the root of emergency practice, public-law scholarship that complicates the book’s “ignored by jurists” framing, and the notable downplaying of Agamben’s earlier “spaces of exception” analysis in favor of a broader ethical thesis.

• Law and the Exception: Towards a New Paradigm (Brill, 2021). Edited by Gian Giacomo Fusco and Przemysław Tacik, this volume brings together legal theory, political philosophy, and international law to rethink the “exception” as more than a temporary emergency—mapping the doctrines, institutions, and practices that allow extraordinary measures to become routine. Across its essays, the book tracks how states use crisis logics to redraw the boundaries of legality, rights, and accountability, offering a useful framework for readers trying to diagnose when emergency governance hardens into a permanent paradigm.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• It’s Carl Schmitt’s Moment (Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Summer 2025). In this essay, James Traub argues that Carl Schmitt is newly relevant because contemporary politics increasingly treats crisis as a reason to concentrate sovereign power in decisive executive action. The piece also warns that Schmitt’s appeal is inseparable from the authoritarian implications of “exception” thinking—and from his own role in legitimating Nazi rule.

The Institute for the Study of States of Exception (ISSE) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, EIN 99-4286439.
Donations are tax deductible.

ISSE is committed to scholarly neutrality, nonpartisanship, and adherence to all applicable federal nonprofit requirements. All content on this site, whether original to ISSE or created by third parties, is provided for educational and research purposes only. Third-party materials do not necessarily reflect the views of ISSE, and their inclusion does not constitute endorsement, affiliation, or political support. All third-party content presented on this site is used under fair use provisions for educational and informational purposes only. If you are the rights holder and believe your work has been used inappropriately, please contact us.

© 2025 Institute for the Study of States of Exception
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UNDER EXCEPTION

It’s closer than you think.

ISSUE 06

January 22, 2026

Dear Readers,

Across courts, constitutions, and crises, this issue examines how exceptional power is increasingly asserted not through declared emergencies, but through ordinary legal and political mechanisms. From recent U.S. judicial efforts to place limits on expansive claims of executive authority, to the use of force abroad without clear legal justification, the materials highlighted here trace how the “exception” can be embedded within routine governance—shielded from review, normalized through practice, and justified after the fact.

Our featured conversations and scholarship deepen this inquiry, exploring the historical roots of emergency rule, the dangers of its permanence, and the ways accountability erodes when extraordinary measures lose clear temporal, legal, or moral boundaries. Together, these pieces reflect ISSE’s core concern: that safeguarding the rule of law today requires recognizing not only dramatic invocations of emergency, but also the quieter legal shifts that allow exceptional power to endure.

Looking ahead, ISSE will soon transition delivery of these biweekly summaries to Substack, making it easier for readers to follow, share, and engage with our work.

Ed Bogan

Founder, Institute for the Study of States of Exception

ISSE ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Upcoming Office Hours: The next ISSE Office Hours session will be at 1300 Eastern Time on Thursday, February 19, 2026. To join the Office Hours mailing list, sign up at https://www.statesofexception.org/officehours. We will send the Google Meet meeting details to all list members in advance of the meeting. As always, please feel free to send any suggestions for Office Hours discussion topics to officehours@statesofexception.org.

GLOBAL EVENTS

• Judicial Limits on Exceptional Executive Power: Two Recent U.S. Court Decisions. Two late-December U.S. court decisions temporarily checked claims of extraordinary executive authority, including a ruling blocking enforcement of a security-clearance revocation and a Supreme Court decision letting an injunction stand against federalizing National Guard units for deployment under 10 U.S.C. § 12406. ISSE highlights that neither dispute hinged on a declared emergency; instead, both reflect an effort to shield entire domains of presidential action from judicial review, embedding the “exception” in ordinary constitutional interpretation.

• ISSE Explainer: When Executive Power Becomes Exceptional—Unitary Executive Theory as a State of Exception. ISSE examines how recent disputes over security-clearance revocations and the attempted federalization of National Guard units illuminate a maximalist “unitary executive” theory that would place whole categories of presidential action beyond meaningful legal review. This article explains how the theory can operate as a state of exception without any declared emergency, by baking extraordinary discretion into constitutional interpretation itself.

• ISSE Statement on the U.S. Capture of Nicolás Maduro. ISSE finds that the January 3 U.S. military operation that seized Nicolás Maduro and his wife represents a significant departure from established international legal constraints on the use of force. The statement notes that non-recognition does not confer authority to act militarily and that, absent Security Council authorization, self-defense, or Venezuelan consent, the operation violates the U.N. Charter—highlighting the risks of normalizing exceptional executive action.

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

• State of Emergency, with Dr. Maciej Wilmanowicz (Common Sense Generation, November 2024). In the first episode of this two-part interview, Dr. Wilmanowicz traces the modern “state of emergency” to Roman models of exceptional authority and the justification of salus populi and necessitas. He then explores the paradox of “legalizing” emergency powers in liberal democracies—where governments often avoid formal declarations (including during COVID-19), fueling constant regulatory change and blurring who decides when exceptional measures are justified and who can hold power to account.

• Permanent State of Exception, with Dr. Maciej Wilmanowicz (Common Sense Generation, November 2024). In the second half of this two-part interview, Dr. Wilmanowicz unpacks Giorgio Agamben’s claim that modern societies increasingly live in a “permanent state of exception,” where emergency measures become the norm rather than the temporary response. The episode traces how public compliance can shift into questioning as proportionality becomes clearer, and it connects today’s “legislative inflation” and debates over the common good, immigration, and liberal-democratic self-preservation to the deeper moral question of individual responsibility within authoritarian drift.

ACADEMIC LITERATURE

• The threshold of emergency: sovereign power, constitutional change and the spectre of Civil War in 1938 Romania (Cercel, 2025). In this piece, Cosmin Cercel argues that emergency powers often operate less as a temporary suspension meant to restore “normality” and more as a legal–political practice that can transform constitutional order. Using Romania’s 1938 shift into King Carol II’s royal dictatorship as a case study—grounded in archival material from Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’s trial and related proceedings—this article traces how prolonged emergency measures helped recast foundational categories in criminal and constitutional law and paved the way for authoritarian rule.

• Unconstitutional States of Emergency (Bjørnskov et al., 2022). Using a new dataset of 853 emergency declarations across constitutional systems, the authors identify 115 as unlawful—cases where emergency practice diverged from constitutional rules. They find that autocratic governments are more likely than democratic governments to violate constitutional emergency provisions, and that requiring second-chamber approval is associated with a higher likelihood that an emergency declaration is unconstitutional.

• Governance of emergency powers and accountability in Indonesian disaster management (Ayuni et al., 2025). This paper evaluates Indonesia’s disaster-management regime against core emergency-law principles and finds that extraordinary authority is weakly constrained—especially through limited legislative involvement, thin oversight, and unclear time limits that enable repeated extensions. The authors recommend tightening statutory deadlines and strengthening accountability mechanisms, including clearer oversight and budgeting controls.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• The colonial origins of the ‘permanent state of exception (International Affairs Blog, June 2021). This piece examines how successive U.S. presidents have increasingly relied on emergency powers, creating a “ratchet effect” in which exceptional authority expands over time and rarely fully recedes. The analysis explores how this pattern erodes public trust in institutions and weakens constitutional checks by normalizing executive discretion in times of crisis.

• EU Crises and Emergencies: What’s in a Name? — EmergEU Working Paper Series (November 2025). This working paper distills an interdisciplinary Maastricht University-hosted workshop on how the EU defines “crisis” and “emergency”—and why those labels matter for governance, legitimacy, and integration trajectories. It underscores a core legal tension: unlike many national systems, the EU Treaties contain no general emergency clause, pushing the Union toward a patchwork of emergency competences and flexible uses of ordinary Treaty bases.

• “The Schmittian inheritance” (Engelsberg Ideas, December 2025). Daniel Johnson traces the renewed political afterlife of Carl Schmitt’s critique of parliamentary democracy—especially the claim that “the sovereign is he who decides on the exception”—in today’s debates over sovereignty, executive power, and the constraints of international law. The essay warns that ideas once used to justify emergency rule in Weimar Germany are resurfacing across contemporary illiberal movements and “strong leader” politics.

The Institute for the Study of States of Exception (ISSE) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, EIN 99-4286439.
Donations are tax deductible.

ISSE is committed to scholarly neutrality, nonpartisanship, and adherence to all applicable federal nonprofit requirements. All content on this site, whether original to ISSE or created by third parties, is provided for educational and research purposes only. Third-party materials do not necessarily reflect the views of ISSE, and their inclusion does not constitute endorsement, affiliation, or political support. All third-party content presented on this site is used under fair use provisions for educational and informational purposes only. If you are the rights holder and believe your work has been used inappropriately, please contact us.

© 2025 Institute for the Study of States of Exception
update your preferences or unsubscribe

UNDER EXCEPTION

It’s closer than you think.

ISSUE 05

December 24, 2025

Dear Readers,

As we close out the year, we want to thank all of our readers and supporters for helping us stand up the Institute for the Study of States of Exception. What began as an idea has transformed into a growing global team of several dozen colleagues building and driving a vibrant platform for tracking, analyzing, and discussing the expanding use of emergency powers around the world. As we look ahead to 2026, we remain committed to deepening this work and building a community dedicated to strengthening the rule of law. We wish you all a restful holiday season and a healthy, hopeful New Year.

Ed Bogan

Founder, Institute for the Study of States of Exception

ISSE ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Upcoming Office Hours: The next ISSE Office Hours session will be take place at 1300 Eastern Time on Thursday, January 15, 2026. To join the Office Hours mailing list, sign up at https://www.statesofexception.org/officehours. We will send the Google Meet meeting details to all list members in advance of the meeting. As always, feel free to send any suggestions for Office Hours discussion topics to officehours@statesofexception.org.

GLOBAL EVENTS

• El Salvador’s State of Exception—“Inside CECOT”. Constructed as part of an emergency regime repeatedly renewed since March 2022, CECOT, a mega-prison built under El Salvador's prolonged state of exception, illustrates how powers justified as temporary crisis responses can become embedded long-term. A linked piece examines conditions inside the facility, and it further considers the U.S. role in transferring individuals into this system through ordinary immigration authorities, highlighting how emergency effects can be externalized abroad even where no formal emergency has been declared at home.

• Lithuania’s Parliament Declares a State of Emergency Amid Hybrid Threat Concerns. On December 9, 2025, Lithuania’s parliament declared a state of emergency in response to reported “hybrid threats,” including sabotage and infrastructure attacks, granting expanded powers such as enhanced policing and heightened surveillance. The declaration highlights how democracies are continuing to turn to exceptional legal frameworks to confront complex security challenges.

• The War on “Drug Boats”: How Lethal Maritime Strikes Push the Boundaries of International Law (Global Policy, November 2025). Recent U.S. maritime operations targeting vessels alleged to be carrying narcotics have included lethal strikes at sea, with reports of follow-on attacks against survivors. Jean-Pierre Murray, Assistant Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, examines how these actions strain international legal standards governing the use of force, particularly principles of necessity, proportionality, and civilian protection at sea.

• Creating Zones of Lawlessness: Trump, Venezuela, and the Piecemeal Construction of an Authoritarian State (Western States Legal Foundation, December 2025). The Trump administration has expanded a suite of extraordinary measures targeting Venezuela—ranging from sanctions and terror designations to economic and immigration controls—that collectively bypass traditional legal and constitutional processes. The analysis argues these “piecemeal” actions functionally create zones of lawlessness in which executive authority operates with minimal oversight, raising concerns about authoritarian drift and weakened rule of law.

• And several additional articles provide updated facts and/or analysis for multiple ongoing storylines, including the ongoing IEEPA tariffs case, and also continued litigation around the declared crime emergency in Washington, DC.

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

• ECOWAS: State of emergency declared across West Africa (SABC News, December 2025). On December 9, 2025, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) announced a regional state of emergency in response to escalating insecurity across several member states. The linked SABC News video reports on the declaration and examines its regional implications, including how coordinated emergency framing may enable governments to expand domestic security powers while blurring lines of accountability across borders.

• Are We Losing Our Democracy? (The New York Times, December 2025). The New York Times examines growing concerns over democratic erosion in the U.S. Their multimedia presentation explores how these trends—ranging from contested elections and emergency declarations to shifts in public trust—signal broader challenges to democratic norms and governance.

• Using and abusing statutory emergency powers (Chautauqua Institution, July 2024). In this video, Elizabeth Goitein outlines how statutory emergency powers in the United States—especially under laws like the National Emergencies Act and IEEPA—have been invoked and stretched in recent decades. She explains the legal foundations of these authorities, common patterns of executive overreach, and ongoing efforts to reform emergency law to ensure clearer limits and stronger checks on executive action.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• The ‘Rachet Effect’: Presidents, Emergency Powers, and the Crisis of Institutional Faith (The Miller Center, September 2025). This piece examines how successive U.S. presidents have increasingly relied on emergency powers, creating a “ratchet effect” in which exceptional authority expands over time and rarely fully recedes. The analysis explores how this pattern erodes public trust in institutions and weakens constitutional checks by normalizing executive discretion in times of crisis.

• Ecuador News Round-Up No. 24: Noboa Cracks Down on Protests While Pushing to Rewrite the Constitution (Center for Economic and Policy Research, September 2025). This round-up by Pedro Labayen Herrera details how Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa’s administration has responded to widespread protests with intensified crackdowns, including forceful police actions and expanded use of state authority. The analysis also highlights the government’s simultaneous push to rewrite the constitution—a move critics say could consolidate executive power and further weaken democratic checks amid ongoing social unrest.

THE BOOKSHELF

• The Indian Emergency (1975-1977) in Historical Perspective—from the book When Democracy Breaks (Bose & Jalal, 2024). This book chapter examines India’s 1975–1977 Emergency under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, when constitutional rights were suspended, political opponents were jailed, and censorship and state control expanded dramatically. By placing the period in historical context, the work explores how emergencies can erode democratic norms, reshape political culture, and leave lasting impacts on legal and institutional checks even after formal emergency rule ends.

The Institute for the Study of States of Exception (ISSE) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, EIN 99-4286439.
Donations are tax deductible.

ISSE is committed to scholarly neutrality, nonpartisanship, and adherence to all applicable federal nonprofit requirements. All content on this site, whether original to ISSE or created by third parties, is provided for educational and research purposes only. Third-party materials do not necessarily reflect the views of ISSE, and their inclusion does not constitute endorsement, affiliation, or political support. All third-party content presented on this site is used under fair use provisions for educational and informational purposes only. If you are the rights holder and believe your work has been used inappropriately, please contact us.

© 2025 Institute for the Study of States of Exception
update your preferences or unsubscribe

UNDER EXCEPTION

It’s closer than you think.

ISSUE 04

December 10, 2025

Dear Readers,

This issue highlights how the logic of emergency continues to move into mainstream political life. The Blood Work podcast revisits Carl Schmitt’s influence on debates about sovereignty and exceptional powers, while new academic work examines COVID-era biopolitics and reevaluates Agamben’s Homo Sacer framework. Brandon Johnson’s analysis in the Yale Journal of Regulation further warns that the growing use of emergency declarations in U.S. domestic policy risks blurring the line between crisis response and routine governance, and several other pieces provide real world debates and examples.

Ed Bogan

Founder, Institute for the Study of States of Exception

ISSE ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Upcoming Office Hours: During our next Office Hours session at 1:00 PM EST on Thursday, December 18, ISSE Founder Ed Bogan will lead a discussion on all the latest events relevant to our focus.

  If you are interested in joining, please send a note to officehours@statesofexception.org and we will add you to the list and send you a calendar invite. If you have suggestions for topics you want to discuss at future office hours, please add those to your note as well.

GLOBAL EVENTS

• ISSE comments on Former JAGs Working Group statement on September 2, 2025 lethal strikes. On November 29, the Former JAGs Working Group released a statement arguing that if a reported second U.S. strike on two survivors of a September 2 attack on a civilian boat allegedly carrying narcotics occurred as described, both the order and its execution would constitute a war crime or murder. The statement frames the incident as a warning about how expanding emergency powers, weakened legal oversight, and aggressive threat narratives can enable unlawful uses of lethal force.

• Executive Emergency Powers and the U.S. Tariff State: Now with the U.S. Supreme Court. On May 28, 2025, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that President Trump’s use of IEEPA emergency powers to impose sweeping “Liberation Day” and reciprocal tariffs was unlawful, and on August 29, the Federal Circuit affirmed while allowing the tariffs to remain in place pending Supreme Court review, which is underway following oral arguments before them on November 5, 2025. The case tests whether emergency economic authorities can be used to effectively rewrite the U.S. tariff schedule, raising broader questions about separation of powers, nondelegation, and the limits of presidential authority.

• Declaration of a crime emergency in the District of Columbia. On August 11, 2025, President Trump declared a crime emergency in Washington, D.C., placed the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control, and deployed 2,000 National Guard troops using Section 740 of the Home Rule Act. After a federal district judge ruled the deployment unlawful on November 20, the D.C. Circuit on December 4 granted the administration’s request to halt that order, continuing the ongoing legal fight over presidential authority to federalize local policing and the D.C. National Guard.

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

• Blood Work podcast - “Crock of Schmitt” (Blood Work Podcast, November 2025). This episode of the Blood Work podcast takes on the work of Carl Schmitt—the Nazi-era jurist whose ideas about sovereignty (“he who decides on the exception”) and the friend–enemy distinction remain central to debates on states of exception. With a frank tone, the hosts unpack how Schmitt’s anti-liberal, authoritarian thought continues to shape contemporary political theory and why understanding his ideas is crucial precisely in order to move away from them.

ACADEMIC LITERATURE

• Biopolitics and public health in times of crisis (Garliauskas, July 2025).

  Rokas Garliauskas examines how COVID-19-era measures—lockdowns, vaccination campaigns, digital contact tracing, and quarantine protocols—reveal public health policy as a form of political power acting directly on bodies and populations. Through comparative case studies, the article shows how legal frameworks and political cultures shape both emergency responses and the unequal valuation of life, arguing that health crises are as deeply political as they are biomedical.

• A Farewell to Homo Sacer? Sovereign Power and Bare Life in Agamben’s Coronavirus Commentary (Prozorov, 2023). Sergei Prozorov uses Giorgio Agamben’s writings on COVID-19 to reassess the core concepts of Homo Sacer—sovereign power, bare life, and the state of exception. He argues that Agamben’s attempt to fuse these ideas into a single paradigm of politics is conceptually flawed, and suggests instead a “non-relation” between sovereign power and bare life that better accounts for possibilities of resistance and transformation.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Normalizing Emergencies - Yale Journal of Regulation (Johnson, February 2025). Brandon J. Johnson examines how President Trump’s return to office has been accompanied by a flurry of “national emergency” declarations—from the southern border to energy and cost-of-living measures—that extend emergency framing into ordinary domestic policy. He warns that treating routine governance as a series of emergencies, especially against the backdrop of January 6 being recast and its participants pardoned, risks eroding legal and political constraints on executive power.

The Institute for the Study of States of Exception (ISSE) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, EIN 99-4286439.
Donations are tax deductible.

ISSE is committed to scholarly neutrality, nonpartisanship, and adherence to all applicable federal nonprofit requirements. All content on this site, whether original to ISSE or created by third parties, is provided for educational and research purposes only. Third-party materials do not necessarily reflect the views of ISSE, and their inclusion does not constitute endorsement, affiliation, or political support. All third-party content presented on this site is used under fair use provisions for educational and informational purposes only. If you are the rights holder and believe your work has been used inappropriately, please contact us.

© 2025 Institute for the Study of States of Exception
update your preferences or unsubscribe

UNDER EXCEPTION

It’s closer than you think.

ISSUE 03

November 18, 2025

Dear Readers,

Across the globe, emergency powers continue to move from temporary tools to entrenched modes of governance. Recent scholarship, events, and human rights reporting reveal how states—from Honduras to Egypt to Türkiye—are normalizing exceptional authority in ways that weaken oversight and civil liberties. This issue highlights key examples of that trend, along with resources clarifying the true legal limits of executive power in the United States.

Ed Bogan

Founder, Institute for the Study of States of Exception

ISSE ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Upcoming Office Hours: During our next Office Hours session at 1:00 PM EST on Thursday, November 20, Jim Petrila (retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in late 2018) will lead a discussion on the IEEPA tariffs case following the November 5 oral arguments at the Supreme Court.  While at CIA, Jim practiced in the Office of General Counsel for twenty-five years. More information on the IEEPA case and the upcoming oral arguments can be found on our website.

  If you are interested in joining, please send a note to officehours@statesofexception.org and we will add you to the list and send you a calendar invite. If you have suggestions for topics you want to discuss at future office hours, please add those to your note as well.

GLOBAL EVENTS

• Emergency powers during COVID-19: when democracies stepped outside normal bounds (November 14, 2025). During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world invoked sweeping war-style emergency powers—locking down movement, controlling information, and centralizing authority. The event revealed how emergency governance, once triggered, can swiftly become normalized and pose long-term risks to civil liberties and democratic frameworks.

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

• Giorgio Agamben: How the “State of Exception” Became the New Rule for Power (Philosopheasy, August 2025). This podcast explores Agamben’s thesis that emergency powers have shifted from rare exceptions to the standard mode of governance, tracing how modern states suspend laws and normalize crisis-management as everyday rule.

ACADEMIC LITERATURE

• Analysis of Executive Decree PCM-29-22 (The State of Exception) (Matamoros, Méndez, & Licona, October 2023). This paper reviews Honduras’s Executive Decree PCM-29-22, finding that while the measure was justified as a response to extortion, over 95% of detentions were for minor offenses and only 1% linked to the stated crime. The authors argue that the extension of the emergency without adequate oversight or data transparency undermines the required standards of necessity, proportionality and legality.

• Unpacking al-Sisi’s Threefold Populism through Giorgio Agamben’s State of Exception Following 3 July 2013 (Magued, June 2025). Shaimaa Magued examines how Egypt’s Abd‑el Fattah el‑Sisi regime has built a three-pronged populist strategy—combining a heroic national saviour image, a military-business-technocrat alliance, and widened legal repression—by operating within a sustained state of exception. The article argues that drawing on Agamben’s theory helps explain how emergency powers shift from temporary crisis tools to entrenched mechanisms of authority.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• What Trump Can and Can’t Do with the Insurrection Act — Demystifying the Most Ominous Law in America (If you can keep it - Insights (Protect Democracy), November 2025). Amanda Carpenter and Rebecca Lullo explain the real scope of the Insurrection Act, noting that while it allows a president to deploy federal troops under narrow circumstances, it does not authorize martial law, suspension of constitutional rights, or unlimited executive control. Their explainer stresses that invocation must meet strict legal criteria and remains bound by both judicial oversight and statutory limits.

• Protected No More: Uyghurs in Türkiye (Human Rights Watch, November 2025). This report documents how the Turkish government has increasingly labeled Uyghurs as “public security threats,” assigning them arbitrary “restriction codes,” detaining them in degrading conditions, denying residency, and pushing for deportation—shifting from a haven to a de facto state of exception.

The Institute for the Study of States of Exception (ISSE) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, EIN 99-4286439.
Donations are tax deductible.

ISSE is committed to scholarly neutrality, nonpartisanship, and adherence to all applicable federal nonprofit requirements. All content on this site, whether original to ISSE or created by third parties, is provided for educational and research purposes only. Third-party materials do not necessarily reflect the views of ISSE, and their inclusion does not constitute endorsement, affiliation, or political support. All third-party content presented on this site is used under fair use provisions for educational and informational purposes only. If you are the rights holder and believe your work has been used inappropriately, please contact us.

© 2025 Institute for the Study of States of Exception
update your preferences or unsubscribe

UNDER EXCEPTION

It’s closer than you think.

ISSUE 02

November 3, 2025

Dear Readers,

More and more, the boundaries between necessity and abuse are being tested. What begins as an emergency measure can quickly become the new normal. At ISSE, our task is to keep those boundaries visible—to remind ourselves and others that vigilance is not cynicism, but our civic responsibility.

Thank you for joining us as we build this important community of readers, researchers, and concerned citizens who refuse to look the other way.

Ed Bogan

Founder, Institute for the Study of States of Exception

ISSE ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Upcoming Office Hours: During our next Office Hours session on Thursday, November 23, Jim Petrila (retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in late 2018) will lead a discussion on the IEEPA tariffs case following the November 5 oral arguments at the Supreme Court.  While at CIA, Jim practiced in the Office of General Counsel for twenty-five years. More information on the IEEPA case and the upcoming oral arguments can be found on our website.

• Podcast Coming Soon: ISSE is launching the first episode of our upcoming podcast series in November 2025. Stay tuned for more information on the podcast’s first guest and topic of discussion.

GLOBAL EVENTS

• What to Look For in the November 5 Supreme Court Arguments on the IEEPA Tariffs (October 31, 2025). On November 5, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. United States, a pivotal case testing whether the President can use emergency powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs. The tariffs—framed as national security responses to fentanyl trafficking and trade deficits—could raise over $2 trillion in import taxes over the next decade. The outcome will determine whether such sweeping trade actions fall within the President’s emergency authority or encroach on Congress’s constitutional power to levy taxes and duties.

• The IEEPA Tariffs Are Based on Pretext (Lawfare, October, 2025). In April, President Trump declared the U.S. trade deficit a national emergency and imposed the highest tariffs in a century under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). With three courts having ruled the move unlawful and a Supreme Court appeal pending, legal scholars are questioning the basis of the declaration. Writing for Lawfare, Stratos Pahis argues that the trade deficit does not constitute an “unusual and extraordinary threat” and that the case offers an opportunity to clarify limits on presidential economic powers.

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

• Lawfare Daily: Bob Bauer and Liza Goitein on Emergency Powers Reform (Lawfare Daily, September 2024). In this Lawfare Daily episode, Bob Bauer and Liza Goitein join host Kevin Frazier to examine the scope of presidential emergency powers under the National Emergencies Act, IEEPA, and the Insurrection Act. The discussion explores bipartisan efforts to reform these authorities and restore congressional oversight.

• Can Emergency Powers Be Leveraged to Create Change Beyond a Crisis? (Berkeley Law Voices Carry, December 2024). In this Voices Carry episode, Professors Katerina Linos and Elena Chachko discuss their paper “Emergency Powers for Good,” arguing that emergency authorities—often linked to overreach—can also drive legitimate and lasting reform. The conversation highlights ongoing scholarly debate, including critiques and responses in the Yale Journal on Regulation and Lawfare.

ACADEMIC LITERATURE

• Emergency Powers for Good (William and Mary Law Review, October 2024). In this article, Berkeley Law Professors Elena Chachko and Katerina Linos argue that emergency powers—typically viewed as threats to the rule of law—can under certain conditions be harnessed for legitimate and transformative reform. Comparing U.S. and EU cases, they outline a framework emphasizing transparency, consensus, and non-discrimination as safeguards for the responsible use of such powers.

• Locke and the State of Exception: Towards a Modern Understanding of Emergency Government (de Wilde, October 2010). Marc de Wilde traces the modern “state of exception” back to John Locke’s theory of emergency prerogative, arguing that today’s constitutional orders still wrestle with the same tension between necessity and abuse. His analysis highlights how efforts to defend democracy through exceptional powers can, paradoxically, endanger it.

• The United Nations and States of Exception (Szymanski, 2010). Charles F. Szymanski examines how international law seeks to restrain the use of states of exception—and whether the United Nations itself operates beyond such limits. The article explores how emergency powers, both within nations and international institutions, risk undermining the very legal orders they aim to protect.

• States of Exception and Their Targets: Racialized Groups, Activists, and the Civilian Population (Codaccioni, 2020). Vanessa Codaccioni traces France’s long history of emergency rule from the Algerian War to the present, revealing how states of exception have disproportionately targeted racialized groups, activists, and civilians. She situates these practices within both colonial and metropolitan traditions of repression, showing how exceptional powers have become normalized across French governance.

The Institute for the Study of States of Exception (ISSE) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, EIN 99-4286439.
Donations are tax deductible.

ISSE is committed to scholarly neutrality, nonpartisanship, and adherence to all applicable federal nonprofit requirements. All content on this site, whether original to ISSE or created by third parties, is provided for educational and research purposes only. Third-party materials do not necessarily reflect the views of ISSE, and their inclusion does not constitute endorsement, affiliation, or political support. All third-party content presented on this site is used under fair use provisions for educational and informational purposes only. If you are the rights holder and believe your work has been used inappropriately, please contact us.

© 2025 Institute for the Study of States of Exception
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UNDER EXCEPTION

It’s closer than you think.

ISSUE 01

16 OCTOBER, 2025

Dear Readers,

Welcome to our inaugural newsletter for the Institute for the Study of States of Exception. From El Salvador to South Korea to Washington and beyond, government leaders are increasingly exploiting or outright fabricating crises in order to expand their executive authority. As a result, rule of law is being put to the test. The Institute serves as a global hub, where rigorous scholarship meets real-world practice, bringing together researchers, policy practitioners, and engaged citizens to monitor and analyze these abuses, and then work to strengthen our guardrails.

This newsletter will be a key medium for growing our community and keeping you informed with timely analysis, research updates, and opportunities for meaningful dialogue on this critical trend.

We're glad you're here, and we look forward to building this community together.

Ed Bogan

Founder, Institute for the Study of States of Exception

ISSE ANNOUNCEMENTS

• ISSE Office Hours: The ISSE team will hold our inaugural Office Hours on Thursday October 30 at 1:00 PM EST. ISSE Office Hours is an hour long Google Meet session that we host once a month. The event is now open to ISSE Newsletter subscribers and is a way for members of the ISSE community to get together and discuss the topics of states of exception and current events in a small group.

  If you are interested in joining, please send a note to officehours@statesofexception.org and we will add you to the list and send you a calendar invite. If you have suggestions for topics you want to discuss, please add those to your note as well.

• Podcast Coming Soon: ISSE is launching the first episode of our upcoming podcast in November 2025. Stay tuned for more information on the podcast’s first guest and topic of discussion.

GLOBAL EVENTS

• Executive Emergency Powers and the U.S. Tariff State: Review in the U.S. Court of International Trade and the Federal Circuit: In late August, a federal appeals court struck down President Trump’s attempt to use emergency powers to impose tariffs, ruling he exceeded his authority. The Supreme Court will hear the case on November 5, testing how far presidents can go in reshaping trade policy during declared crises.

• Declaration of a crime emergency in the District of Colombia: President Trump’s August 2025 “crime emergency” briefly placed local policing under federal control before a legal compromise restored local authority. The episode highlights enduring tensions between emergency powers and democratic governance.

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

• Can the president declare a national emergency without limits? (UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, June 2025). In this It’s the Law episode, Chemerinsky argues that even in crises, the Constitution constrains presidential authority—and asks what true limits on executive power look like.

ACADEMIC LITERATURE

• Converging Histories: South Korea’s Martial Law Crisis in a Global Conjunctural Frame (Jamie Doucette, July 2025). Doucette examines President Yoon’s December 2024 self-coup attempt through a “global conjunctural” lens, showing how Cold War and neoliberal legacies shape South Korea’s current constitutional crisis.

• Short-term Security or Long-term Democratic Stability? Evidence from Ecuador’s war on gangs (Juan Masullo & David Morisi, June 2025). Masullo and Morisi find that Equadorian support for militarized crackdowns drops sharply once citizens learn their democratic costs.

• Partisan Emergencies (Nathaniel Glass, April 2025). Glass warns that presidents can exploit emergency powers amid partisan conflict and argues courts must test not only how those powers are used—but whether the declared emergency is legitimate.

• Administrative Law as a Mockery of the Constitutional Controls of State of Exception: Colombia, Covid-19 and Obligatory Preventative Lockdown (David Anzola Galindo, April 2025). Galindo shows how Colombia’s pandemic decrees bypassed constitutional safeguards, undermining judicial review and restricting freedom of movement.

• Emergency Provisions and Constitutional Safeguards in India (Sakashi Gupta, July 2025). Gupta’s chapter of Contours of Contemporary Legal Research: Foundations and Frontiers of Public Law surveys India’s emergency provisions—national, state, and financial—highlighting how courts, parliament, and rights protections strive to prevent abuse while balancing security and liberty.

The Institute for the Study of States of Exception (ISSE) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, EIN 99-4286439.
Donations are tax deductible.

ISSE is committed to scholarly neutrality, nonpartisanship, and adherence to all applicable federal nonprofit requirements. All content on this site, whether original to ISSE or created by third parties, is provided for educational and research purposes only. Third-party materials do not necessarily reflect the views of ISSE, and their inclusion does not constitute endorsement, affiliation, or political support. All third-party content presented on this site is used under fair use provisions for educational and informational purposes only. If you are the rights holder and believe your work has been used inappropriately, please contact us.

© 2025 Institute for the Study of States of Exception
update your preferences or unsubscribe

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