Common
State of exception
State in which the sovereign may ignore the law in the name of the public good
State of exception
A state of exception (German: Ausnahmezustand) is a legal and political concept introduced in the 1920s by the German philosopher, jurist and later Nazi Party member Carl Schmitt, which refers to a situation in which the sovereign suspends the operation of the legal order. The exception forms part of Schmitt's theory of sovereignty, and is summarised in his 1922 book Political Theology, where Schmitt relates the exception to his theory of sovereignty through the formulation "sovereign is he who decides on the exception". The state of exception is broader than the notion of a state of emergency (martial law), as deciding upon a state of exception does not need to be grounded in any legal basis, and is instead a pure decision of the sovereign. While a state of emergency may be facilitated by the legal norms of the current legal regime (such as the constitution), a state of exception emerges from a "political" decision that transcends the legal order. As Schmitt argued in The Concept of the...
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