state of exception

plural states of exception

1. human sciencesA condition in which ordinary laws or norms have been suspended by a political authority.

   Out of such rhetoric emerged an American state of exception, and with it, the disturbing outlines of inquisitorial behavior.

   2006, Arthur Versluis, The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism, page 127

   2 more examples

   Regardless of how we conceive of them, rights are just abstract entitlements that, given a state of exception, can be suspended at will by the very same states that profess a belief in the universality and inalienability of these rights!

   2010, Flora Sapio, Sovereign Power and the Law in China, page 252

   The progressive normalization of the state of exception has eroded rule-bound procedures that give substance to conventional regulatory regimes.

   2017, Martin J. Murray, The Urbanism of Exception: The Dynamics of Global City Building in the Twenty-First Century, page 311