EMERGE: Rethinking Emergency Across Europe Through Legal History
The Institute for the Study of States of Exception (ISSE) is pleased to highlight the EMERGE Project, an innovative interdisciplinary research initiative based at the Ghent Legal History Institute at Ghent University.
Led by Dr. Cosmin Cercel, EMERGE brings together an international team of scholars to examine how emergency has shaped constitutional orders, legal institutions, and political cultures across Europe over the past century.
The Project examines emergency as a constitutional phenomenon whose effects extend beyond moments of crisis.
Why ISSE Is Highlighting This Project
EMERGE addresses one of the central questions that also lies at the heart of ISSE's mission: Do emergency powers truly end when the crisis is over?
Conventional constitutional theory often treats emergency as a temporary departure from ordinary governance, after which constitutional norms and legal protections are expected to return unchanged. With a particular focus on Europe, EMERGE challenges this assumption by demonstrating that emergency frequently leaves enduring legal, institutional, and political legacies that continue to shape constitutional practice long after the immediate crisis has passed.
This insight closely aligns with ISSE's own research on embedded exceptionality, the process by which extraordinary powers, institutions, and practices become normalized within ordinary systems of government. By examining these developments through historical analysis, EMERGE provides important critical context for understanding many of the contemporary developments that ISSE documents around the world.
About the Project
Based at Ghent University, EMERGE investigates how emergency legislation and exceptional governance developed across Europe between 1914 and 2020. Rather than treating emergencies as isolated legal episodes, the project examines them as historically contingent processes that transformed constitutional systems, public institutions, and political culture over time.
The project combines comparative legal history, legal theory, and digital humanities to study emergency as a multidimensional socio-legal phenomenon. Alongside traditional archival research, EMERGE employs digital methodologies (including semantic analysis, network analysis, and other computational tools) to trace how emergency concepts, institutions, and legal practices evolved across different jurisdictions and historical periods.
By integrating these approaches, EMERGE seeks to develop a richer understanding of how emergency has influenced the operation of law, the development of constitutional traditions, and the relationship between states, institutions, and society.
Research Themes
EMERGE's work is organized around three interconnected research themes:
Contexts of Emergency examines the historical, political, and constitutional circumstances that gave rise to emergency legislation. Drawing on archival research, parliamentary debates, government records, and digital analytical methods, this research explores how emergencies were understood, debated, and implemented across different legal systems.
Laws of Emergency investigates the legal doctrines, constitutional traditions, and theoretical frameworks through which emergency powers have been justified and institutionalized. Through comparative legal history, this work seeks to identify both the shared characteristics and distinctive national features of European emergency law.
Actors of Emergency focuses on the individuals and institutions that shape, and are shaped by, emergency governance. Particular attention is given to judicial independence, institutional transformation, and the ways emergency powers affect constitutional actors, legal protections, and the everyday operation of government.
Why It Matters
Emergency governance has become one of the defining constitutional questions of the twenty-first century. Understanding today's debates requires not only monitoring contemporary emergencies, but also examining the historical development of the legal ideas, institutions, and practices that continue to shape governmental responses to crisis.
EMERGE makes a significant contribution to this effort by demonstrating that emergency is not simply a temporary legal mechanism invoked during moments of exceptional danger. It is also a historical force that has profoundly influenced constitutional development across Europe.
ISSE is pleased to highlight EMERGE as an important contribution to the growing international community of scholars examining emergency governance, constitutional resilience, and the long-term effects of exceptional powers.
Readers interested in learning more about the project, its publications, research activities, and upcoming events are encouraged to visit the EMERGE Project website and its Events & Collaborations page.
