Overcoming necessity: emergency, constraint, and the meanings of American constitutionalism

Abstract

"This book is rooted in the post-9/11 debate over the scope of the president's authority to react to perceived emergency. One side argues for unbounded and unilateral executive authority, and the other a recommitment to rights, subject to circumstantial limits. Almost all sides converge on some variation of the idea that during emergencies the laws must give way (they just disagree over when and how they give way), that the constitution is not a 'suicide pact,' and that executive officials must be given leeway to act against the law, even if subject to post-hoc accountability. None of these arguments adequately address how they rely on prioritizing necessity in constitutional thought. The author contends that legal actors and scholars often misunderstand the role that necessity plays within liberal constitutionalism, thinking that it provides an excuse for jettisoning commitments to constitutional principles and values and therefore justifying legally unconstrained government action"--