God Almighty, the State of Exception and the Erosion of Democracy

• In Event: State Crime and Its Harms

Abstract

In State Crime and Resistance, Elizabeth Stanley and Jude McCulloch maintain that criminology has not been at the forefront of the crimes of states including genocide, gross violation of human rights, and unjust social policies. Drawing on various texts including Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Giorgio Agamben’s State of Exception, and Raymond Michalowski’s “The master’s tools: Can supranational law confront crimes of powerful states?,” this paper argues that within liberal democratic states such as the United States, it is the Constitution that grants the sovereign/the President the power to declare a state of exception during which the executive orders are supported by the force of law. Given that the state is the replica of God Almighty as maintained by Schmitt, I contend that it is the Constitution that needs revision in order to curb the power of the sovereign, who decides on the willed state of exception, creating the fertile grounds for an authoritarian and totalitarian state predisposed to criminality.

Author

• Ladan Adhami-Dorrani, York University