Making Sense of ‘Public’ Emergencies

Abstract

The paper seeks to clarify the notion of 'public emergency' and to address various theoretical misconceptions surrounding it. Public emergencies, I contend, are emergencies which interfere with the performance of a government's role and which, as a result, tend to have distinctive moral implications. Since their salient characteristics often vary markedly, I argue that one must pay close attention to them when assessing what responses they warrant. I use as my foil three leading theoretical approaches which I challenge and seek to reconstruct: (1) Tom Sorell's focus on worst-case scenarios and conflation of distinctively salient 'public' emergencies; (2) Michael Walzer's 'supreme emergencies' and their alleged ability to make some governmental immoralities moral; and (3) Giorgio Agamben's insistence on a declaration of emergency as the salient moral and legal mark of a public emergency. Overall, I aim to set the stage for further discussion of the specific implications of public emergencies for the law.

How to Understand Limitations of the Right to Exit with Respect to Losses Associated with Health Worker Emigration: A Clarification

“…A public emergency, then, represents a state in which a territorial or a collective interest in certain essential needs, goods, values or rights are at stake rather than an individual's or a few individuals' interests (Rubenstein 2007). Further, it is conventionally considered a state's responsibility to tackle a public emergency by instituting the relevant measures (Sorrell 2002;Tanguay-Renaud 2009). The reason for the focus on the state and its officials as the responsible party to address the given emergency can be explained by the assumption that state officials are in the best position to tackle the emergency, given their de jure or de facto authority over the territory and their ease of access to and use of resources (Tanguay-Renaud 2009: 35).…”

Supreme emergencies and public accountability: the case of procurement in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…A supreme emergency exists when a nation or community faces a threat of 'an unusual and horrifying kind' that will cause harm and requires an urgent response if the harm is to be averted or minimised (Tanguay-Renaud 2009;John 2009). Unlike many regional/national emergencies in recent times, such as the Australia bushfires in 2019, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Japanese earthquake in 2011 and the Indonesian Tsunami in 2004, the Covid19 pandemic is a global health emergency, the scale and geographic reach of which is unprecedented with over 120 million cases worldwide.…”

“…Walzer's discussion of conflicting absolutes argues that in the event of imminent harm, certain sorts of actions which are prohibited or considered unethical in normal situations might become permissible in an emergency. 2 Supreme emergencies that pose grave threats to law, order, state institutions and collective survival place unique demands on the polity and the assumption of exceptional powers are a common response and a key element of crisis management strategies (Tanguay-Renaud 2009). Although the exceptional powers invoked by governments in such scenarios can be defensible (Sorell 2002), their ability to interfere with fundamental rights and civil liberties needs to be balanced by checks to prevent or minimise the possibility of abuse of that power and to be accountable for the effectiveness of decisions made in an emergency response (Gross and Aoláin 2006;Frowde et al 2020).…”