Political Theory

Dictatorship, Emergency Powers, and Constitutional Government

ABSTRACT

Except for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, no provision for emergencies was accepted as part of liberal constitutions by the early nineteenth century. Now, in the face of the threat of terrorism, an interest in the possibility of fitting special emergency powers into a constitutional order has resurfaced. This conference studied the risks to liberty posed by emergency powers granted to the sovereign.

READING LIST

Conference Readings

Constant, Benjamin. Political Writings. Edited by and translated by Biancamaria Fontana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Dicey, A. V. Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution [1885; 8th edition, 914]. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1982.

Friedrich, Carl Joachim. “Dictatorship in Germany?” Foreign Affairs 9, no. 1 (October, 1930): 118-132.

Friedrich, Carl Joachim. Constitutional Government and Democracy - Fourth Edition. Waltham: Ginn and Co., 1968.

Ignatieff, Michael. The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Lincoln, Abraham. Collected Works, Volume 4. Edited by Roy P. Baslar. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1955.

Lincoln, Abraham. Collected Works, Volume 5. Edited by Roy P. Baslar. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1955.

Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government (Student Edition). Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Discourses. Edited by Bernard Crick. Translated by Leslie J. Walker, S.J. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.

Manin, Bernard. Les Usages de la Separation des Pouvoirs - The Uses of the Separation of Powers. Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2008.

Montesquieu. Considerations on the Causes of The Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline. Translated by David Lowenthal. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1999.

Montesquieu. The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu, Volume 3. London: T. Evans, 1777.

Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat. The Spirit of the Laws. Translated by Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller, and Harold Samuel Stone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Posner, Richard A. Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Richet, Denis, “Committee of Public Safety” In A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, edited by Francois Furet and Mona Ozouf, 474-478. translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1989.

Rossiter, Clinton L. Constitutional Dictatorship - Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. Translated by Maurice Cranston. London: Penguin Classics, 1968.

Schmitt, Carl. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Translated by George Schwab. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Sharpe, R. J. The Law of Habeas Corpus. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.

Waldron, Jeremy. “Security and Liberty: The Image of Balance.” The Journal of Political Philosophy 11, no. 2 (2003): 191-210.