Urgency and Exceptional Times : The State of Emergency as an Institution of Official Time
: Brunila, Tuukka
: Amorosa, Paolo; Erkkilä, Ville; Stenlund, Karolina
Publisher: Routledge
: 2026
: Times of Global Injustice: Temporalities of Power and Community Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries
: Routledge Studies in Law, Rights and Justice
: 112
: 138
: 978-1-032-87377-0
: 978-1-003-53757-1
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003537571-7
: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003537571-7/urgency-exceptional-times-tuukka-brunila
This chapter focuses on emergency law as an institution of official time. Legal systems tend to include mechanisms and strategies for accelerating decision-making and legislative processes in response to emergencies. A state of emergency is often declared to enable swift action and a return to normalcy. The chapter analyzes how accelerative processes, both within and beyond the law, affect a legal system's temporality. In preparing for emergencies, often a sense of urgency emerges that further accelerates legislative processes – even in a state of normalcy. Responses to terrorism through emergency legislation have particularly contributed to expanding urgency within the legal system and accelerating legislative procedures. A critical concept of extra-constitutional urgency is developed to examine how, in contemporary emergency law, urgency can significantly weaken constitutional principles. The chapter concludes with a discussion on how to distinguish extra-constitutional urgency from other forms of urgency, especially in the context of climate change.