[...]... establishing the authenticity of the emergency: 18 Legal Control of Political Violence 1 there must be a clear, present and incontestable danger to the life of the nation; 2 the President must define and explain to Congress and the people the nature of this threat; 3 the perception of the emergency, the judgment that the life of the nation is truly at stake, must be broadly shared by Congress and by the people;... define and explain to Congress and the people the nature of the crisis implies the continued constitutional status of both Congress and the presidency But once we suspend the Constitution, the status of the offices and institutions it creates are themselves problematic An official who claims the Lockean prerogative, the power to suspend the Constitution, "risks the absurdity of saying: 'An officer... Communities also agree to bind themselves, and constitutions are the (more or less) written evidence both of the binding and of the rules that bind.4 But in our efforts to interpret these rules, to apply the majestic generalities of constitutional language to the vagaries of everyday political disputes, we occasionally lose sight of the vanity that gives rise to constitution making as a political activity... Political Violence sion is a sensible answer to the wrong question Whether we should suspend a constitution in the interest of self-preservation is a different question than whether standards derived from the basic principles of constitutionalism restrain the exercise of powers of emergency How one approaches the former requires some understanding and appreciation of the second inquiry and therefore of the. .. meaning.51 An Example from Chess Let me offer yet another analogy What I call the constitutive principles of constitutionalism partly resemble the rules of a game The rules of chess, for instance, determine how the game begins, limit the range of permissible moves, and govern the game's end as well Without these rules, there would be no game of chess or, better, no way to distinguish between the game of. .. mechanism of consent The issue was settled as a matter of constitutional doctrine in the post-Civil War case of Texas v White, in which the Supreme Court, in considering whether Texas had remained a sovereign state during the tenure of the war, concluded: "When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation All the obligations of perpetual Union, and all the. .. constitution making from other forms of political behavior And in the same way that the constitutive principles of contract law allow us to distinguish between contracts and promises, the constitutive principles of constitutionalism enable us to distinguish between constitution making and other forms of political behavior It follows that an interpreter may properly appeal to these principles in disputes... take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community, whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome.10 Carl J Friedrich and Carl... attributed the proliferation of constitution making in the late nineteenth and mid twentieth centuries to an "abuse of political terminology" and the "political exploitation and manipulation of language."42 As a consequence, he argued, there developed some confusion over the very meaning of the word "constitution." Whereas "in the nineteenth century what was meant by 'constitution' [the concept of limited... understand the significance of the agreement (the capacity to understand the nature of the obligation they have assumed and to reason), a requirement of legal consideration, and a requirement that the terms of the agreement not violate public policy The background principles of contract law are not so much "in" the contract as they are constitutive of the activity of contract making A legally enforceable . constitutions are the (more or less) written evidence both of the binding and of the rules that bind. 4 But in our efforts to interpret these rules, to apply the majestic generalities of constitutional. class="bi x0 y0 w0 h1" alt="" CONSTITUTIONS IN CRISIS This page intentionally left blank CONSTITUTIONS IN CRISIS Political Violence and the Rule of Law John E. Finn New York Oxford OXFORD . philosophy. In the remaining chapters I integrate the principles articulated in the first chapter with a comparative study of constitutional maintenance and the legal control of political