ISSE was founded in response to a profound and troubling modern, global trend: the increasing normalization of extraordinary executive authority as governments invoke emergency powers during real, perceived, or manufactured crises and, in some cases, extend those authorities beyond their intended constitutional limits. While often necessary to confront genuine threats, emergency powers also carry inherent constitutional risks. Extraordinary powers may become normalized, institutional safeguards can gradually weaken, and exceptional measures may become embedded within ordinary governance. As these developments spread across jurisdictions and political systems, strengthening the knowledge, institutions, and constitutional guardrails needed to preserve accountable democratic governance has become one of the defining challenges of our time.

What We Do

ISSE serves as a global center for research, analysis, and public engagement devoted to the study of exceptional governance. By bringing together scholars, lawyers, policy practitioners, journalists, historians, technologists, and other experts, we seek to deepen understanding of how extraordinary powers are exercised while producing research and practical resources that strengthen constitutional governance and democratic resilience.

Our work is organized around three complementary and intersecting program lines.

Academic Scholarship Program

Our Academic Scholarship Program advances rigorous interdisciplinary research on states of exception through original scholarship, academic partnerships, conferences, fellowships, and the development of a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. By cultivating an international community of researchers, ISSE seeks to strengthen and expand this emerging field of study while encouraging collaboration across law, political science, philosophy, history, public policy, international relations, and related disciplines.

Global Reporting & Analysis Program

Our Global Reporting & Analysis Program monitors contemporary developments involving emergency powers and constitutional governance around the world through a data-driven approach. Through comparative research and analysis, the program documents emerging developments, identifies broader patterns across jurisdictions, and provides historical and constitutional context for understanding exceptional governance. The program also develops long-term monitoring capabilities and analytical resources that strengthen comparative research and support evidence-based public understanding.

Legal Action Program

Our Legal Action Program examines the evolving legal landscape surrounding emergency powers use and abuse through litigation tracking, constitutional analysis, legal commentary, and educational resources. By studying how courts, legislatures, and constitutional systems respond to exceptional authority, the program contributes to a deeper understanding of the legal principles and institutional guardrails that preserve constitutional government during periods of crisis.

How We Work

ISSE disseminates the work of all three program areas through a common set of institutional platforms designed to reach scholarly, professional, and public audiences. These include our website, global content library, newsletters, podcasts, explainers, multimedia programming, conferences, public events, and other publications. Together, these platforms ensure that research, analysis, and legal scholarship produced across the Institute remain accessible, interconnected, and available to audiences around the world.

We approaches states of exception as an inherently interdisciplinary subject requiring multiple perspectives and methods of inquiry. Our work integrates academic scholarship, legal analysis, practitioner experience, and comparative research to examine exceptional governance across political systems, constitutional traditions, and historical periods.

Our community includes constitutional scholars, legal practitioners, national security professionals, historians, political scientists, technologists, and policy experts who contribute diverse expertise to a shared mission. Drawing upon historical experience, contemporary developments, and emerging research technologies, we seek to identify recurring patterns, illuminate institutional strengths and vulnerabilities, and foster a more comprehensive understanding of how constitutional democracies respond to extraordinary circumstances.

Why ISSE matters

Emergency powers are designed to be temporary. Their legitimacy depends upon necessity, proportionality, transparency, accountability, and ultimately, their termination.

History repeatedly demonstrates, however, that exceptional powers can outlast the crises that gave rise to them. Extraordinary authorities become institutionalized. Temporary legal measures evolve into ordinary administrative practice. Incremental changes accumulate until constitutional norms are weakened and democratic safeguards are diminished.

Responding to these challenges requires more than documenting individual emergencies. It requires sustained scholarship, comparative analysis, historical perspective, informed public discourse, and strong institutional networks capable of recognizing broader patterns across jurisdictions and over time.

ISSE exists to help meet that need. By connecting research with practice and fostering collaboration across disciplines and professions, we seek to strengthen the broader ecosystem that supports constitutional governance, democratic accountability, and the rule of law.

Join the ISSE Community

Whether you are a scholar, student, legal practitioner, policymaker, journalist, technologist, or engaged citizen, there is a place for you within the ISSE community.

We invite you to explore our research, follow global developments through our reporting and analysis, participate in our conferences and public discussions, engage with our publications and multimedia resources, and contribute to an expanding international network committed to advancing the study of exceptional governance.

The challenges posed by states of exception transcend borders, political systems, and academic disciplines. Meeting those challenges requires sustained collaboration, intellectual rigor, and a shared commitment to constitutional governance.

Thank you for visiting the Institute. We invite you to join us as we work to advance scholarship, deepen public understanding, strengthen constitutional resilience, and promote the rule of law around the world.

Welcome to the Institute for the Study of States of Exception—where informed dialogue leads to an empowered world.