The Legal Politics of Time in Emergencies: Ticking-Time in the Israeli High Court of Justice

Abstract

This paper challenges and expands commonplace assumptions about problems of time and temporality in emergencies. In traditional emergency powers theory “emergency time” is predominantly an “exceptional time.” The problem is that there is “no time” and the solution is limited “in time”: exceptional behavior is allowed for a special time only, until the emergency is over, or according to formal sunset clauses. But what is characteristic of many emergencies is not the problem of “no time” but the ways in which time is legally structured and framed to handle them. Using the Israeli High Court of Justice 1999 decision on the use of physical interrogation methods under conditions of necessity, this paper illustrates how legally significant emergency-time structures that lay beyond the problematic of exceptional time, gravely implicate the way that “exceptional measures” are practiced and regularized.

Citation

Loevy, K. (2016), "The Legal Politics of Time in Emergencies: Ticking-Time in the Israeli High Court of Justice", Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 70), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 85-124. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-433720160000070010