Abstract
The “Etat d’urgence”—the state of emergency in reaction to the terrorist attacks in November 2015—comes from a circumstantial law, adopted on 3 April 1955. This precarious origin has not prevented it from continuing to be the positive law. Although this law limits citizens’ rights and liberties tremendously, the Conseil d’Etat and the Conseil constitutionnel have tolerated state clerk to consolidate this derogation of French common law. This anything goes legal attitude reinforced this situation. The introduction of an a priori (1958) and a posteriori (2008) control of the constitutionality of law has not changed this situation.
This text is the same as the speech which was delivered at the Maison française d’Oxford on 29 April 2016. It does not take into account the whole literature which was, since then, published on this topic. For all the details on the French “état d’urgence”, see in this book the previous article of Professor Cecile Guérin Bargues: “The French Case or the Hidden Dangers of a Long Term State of Emergency” and the special issue of Revue française de droit administratif (RFDA), May-June 2016, especially Baranger (2016) and Roblot-Troizier (2016).
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Notes
- 1.
The state of emergency is no more in force. It was renewed for two months by the Act of Parliament of 20 May 2016. The French President intended to let cease the state of emergency in the day before the dramatic attack of Nice (14 July 2016) which changed everything. The «état d’urgence» was then renewed by the Act of Parliament of 21 July 2016 (renewal for six months) and, recently by the Act of Parliament of 19 December 2016, and more recently by the Act of Parliament of 11 July 2017. For the end (of the state of emergency) see footnote 16.
- 2.
Beaud and Guérin-Bargues (2016a). This rather «long» article, updated and shortened, became a book which was published in September 2016 under the following title, Beaud and Guérin-Bargues (2016a, b). This book may be completed by the book written by Cassia (2016) which is more focused on the courts and on the administrative law, especially on the decisions of the Conseil d’Etat, the French administrative court (and the leading court, so to say).
- 3.
For a convenient summary of the three French states of exception (Article 16, state of emergency and state of siege), see the volume, «Les pouvoirs de crise» in the Journal Pouvoirs n°10, 1976 (PUF).
- 4.
- 5.
See details, Beaud and Guérin-Bargues (2016b) 74–81.
- 6.
C.E. Ord 14 November 2015, Rolin, req. N° 286835, published in Recueil Lebon.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
For a review, see Le Bot (2016).
- 10.
It is noteworthy to add that the state of siege (Belagerungzustand, in German), which was created by the French Second Republic (1849), was taken as a model by Carl Schmitt when he began to study the state of exception, during the World War I. See his analysis of the statute law of 1849 in Schmitt (1978), 198–199.
- 11.
- 12.
See the standard commentary in Long et al. (2015) 529.
- 13.
Saint-Bonnet (2001).
- 14.
- 15.
Ackerman (2004).
- 16.
While proofreading this article, we learn that the Act of Parliament of 30 October 2017 had integrated the content of the state of emergency in a permanent anti-terrorist law. This meddling of normal criminal law (against terrorism) and of public exceptional law (state of emergency) is probably the worst solution, and it was the solution which was feared by the tenants of civil rights. It will be interesting to see how « our » courts will react if this bill of law will be adopted by the Parliament. There is little hope that they repeal this institutionalisation of the state of emergency. The state of emergency ceased at the 1st November 2017 (by caudicty).
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Beaud, O. (2018). “Anything Goes”: How Does French Law Deal with the State of Emergency?. In: Auriel, P., Beaud, O., Wellman, C. (eds) The Rule of Crisis. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 64. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74473-5_11
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