Finding the Limits of France's State of Emergency

Abstract

Since 2015, France has experienced a particularly high number of terrorist attacks. This paper examines the French state response to such events and analyzes its effect on the relationship between civil liberties and national security. The activation of the state of emergency -as an exceptional measure that suspends warranted searches and certain freedoms -highlights a potential impediment to reconciling France's national values such as liberté with the urgent need to mitigate terrorist activity. Following the fifth consecutive renewal of this exceptional measure in December 2016, a close scrutiny of its legitimacy, its effectiveness, and its objectives is both timely and warranted. I thus ask the following two questions: In what ways have exceptional crisis measures been historically entrenched in the French socio-political order? In the aftermath of the attacks of November 2015, how does the state of emergency build on these measures and normalize the use of inherently exceptional policies? KeywordsFrance, terrorism, state of emergency, human rights, democracy, HollandeFinding the Limits of France's State of Emergency 1 4 Filip G. Bozinovic University of Caliofrnia, Berkeley IntroductionThe state of emergency in France -an exceptional measure that revives Napoleonic-era executive and policing powers and suspends certain liberties -serves as a particularly interesting case study of the evolving relationship between legal and political arsenals' response to precarious situations. Whereas exceptional measures typically respond to situations -such as a hot war -in which the prospect of a state's survival is threatened and citizens' daily life is halted, France is responding to a decades-old threat of terrorism with an approach that draws on a particular and contemporary interpretation of war. In the self-proclaimed "democratic and social republic" (Constitution of October 4, 1958, Art.1), the relatively low level of public opposition to exceptional measures that endure five consecutive prolongations since 2015 is noteworthy and anomalous. For this reason, the origins and theories behind exceptional measures in France are worthy of analysis in order to understand and contextualize their present application. France's historical construction as a pioneer of the legalization project of military government following the Revolution of 1848 is better understood through a solicitation of existing literature. Agamben (2005) and Rossiter (1948) situate the theories of exceptional measures in a historical context, explaining France's prominent position in the construction of the politics of necessity, exception, and social order. In this paper, I draw upon existing scholarly work, founding documents of the French Republic, statutes, and political discourses in order to analyze the coexistence of democratic values and exceptional laws in France today, using entrenchment and normalization as central foci. In this way, I seek to understand the processes by which entrenched exceptional measures feed into the potentially ...

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