chapter 18
...................................................................................................................................................EMERGENCY
POWERS
...................................................................................................................................................john ferejohn
pasquale pasquino
1 Introduction
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Emergency powers have been a long-standing topic in political and consti-
tutional theory since the experience of ‘‘dictatorship’’ in the ancient Roman
Republic, and have recently become an object of intense debate because of the
new threat to liberal-democratic order represented by global terrorism. These
issues take somewhat diVerent shapes in the United States and Europe. Some
of the European constitutions have explicit mechanisms for dealing with
emergencies, although these have almost never been employed and not at
all to confront global terrorism. American scholars are divided as to whether
or not the US Constitution contains an emergency regime, or, if it does not,
whether it should (see Ackerman 2004 , for one proposal). One must suppose
that those in the latter camp think that such a constitutional option, if it
existed, would be used in circumstances roughly like that created by inter-
national terrorism. But whatever the facts about constitutions and whatever
the likelihood that constitutional provisions would actually be invoked, it
seems important to clarify the notions of emergency and emergency powers.