The Constitution of Law: Legality in a Time of Emergency

Extract

The Constitution of Law: Legality in a Time of Emergency, David Dyzenhaus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. xv, 250.

This book, which began life as the 2004 J.C. Smuts lectures at the University of Cambridge, is contribution to the burgeoning debate about emergency powers in post-9/11 liberal democracies. States that pride themselves on their commitment to constitutionalism and the rule of law find themselves engaged in the difficult task of suspending or restricting the operation of civil liberties while simultaneously trumpeting their own commitment to the liberal values that they purport to be defending against threat. As Dyzenhaus usefully reminds us, the predicament is not a new one. Smuts himself not only survived being on the wrong side of a colonial insurrection but, before becoming prime-minister of South Africa and a leading architect of apartheid (a paradigm example of injustice carried on under colour of legality), played a walk-on role in legal opposition to the notorious DORA, the Defence of the Realm (Consolidation) Act that allowed detention without trial in the United Kingdom during the First World War. These are murky waters, indeed.