Mike Steve Collins, Texas A&M University, writing in Academe Blog: “In his theory on the state of exception, philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls attention to a special sort of sovereign—a leader freed ‘from all subordination to the law’ who becomes himself a ‘living law.” Read more here.
A “state of exception,” as theorized by Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, refers to a situation in which a sovereign power suspends or disregards the standard rules of law, including fundamental rights and freedoms, to address a perceived existential threat. This suspension of the law is not a complete breakdown of order, but rather a specific legal mechanism in which the sovereign asserts its authority to act outside the established legal framework.
