Book chapter
Legally Strong Executive Branches, but it’s more About Democracy and Politics: The Case of Australia
Parliaments in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Between Crisis Management, Civil Rights and Proportionality Observations from Asia and the Pacific, pp.17-36
The Editors, under the auspices of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Ltd. and University of Cebu School of Law
2021
Abstract
The notorious political theorist Carl Schmitt is quoted as stipulating that "sovereign is (s)he who has the power to declare a state of emergency (Hoffmann 2005, p. 171). Whereas the quote tends to capture the attention of the reader and to provoke some thought, it already contains an important assumption: that the declaration of a state of emergency removes all constraints and elevates the perpetrator to a state above responsibility and accountability, as the obsolete understanding of sovereignty might have implied and as Louis XIV tried to express when he claimed: "L'État, c'est moi" (Delahunty and Dignen 2010). Looking at the legal framework of combatting the COVID-19 in Australia, one could be forgiven for thinking about Schmitt or Louis in this context because legally, the battle against the virus is very much one conducted on executive emergency powers. However, as will also become apparent, these powers, though seemingly sweeping and only weakly controlled legally, are nonetheless not of the sort that would remove the executive from all accountability and responsibility.
Details
- Title
- Legally Strong Executive Branches, but it’s more About Democracy and Politics: The Case of Australia
- Authors/Creators
- Dr Jürgen Bröhmer - Murdoch University, School of Law and Criminology
- Contributors
- R-L Eisma-Osorio (Editor)K. Grabow (Editor)P. Hefele (Editor)S. Samse (Editor)
- Publication Details
- Parliaments in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Between Crisis Management, Civil Rights and Proportionality Observations from Asia and the Pacific, pp.17-36
- Publisher
- The Editors, under the auspices of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Ltd. and University of Cebu School of Law
- Identifiers
- 991005575467707891
- Copyright
- © 2021 Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Ltd. and University of Cebu School of Law
- Murdoch Affiliation
- School of Law and Criminology
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
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