Emergency Laws and Regulations – A Comparative Overview 

This research analyzes constitutional and statutory arrangements for handling emergencies in twelve countries: Turkey, New Zealand, India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Israel, Argentina, Greece, Poland, and South Africa. Our focus is not to engage in the ongoing debates on the legitimacy of emergency powers but to explore the legal and institutional structures through which these powers are governed. By examining these facets, we aim to contribute both theoretically and empirically to a deeper understanding of this critical aspect of legal systems.

We seek to answer key questions about how modern democracies regulate disasters. Do they suspend ordinary legal arrangements in emergencies, activating a section of the Constitution that grants special legal powers to specific agencies? If so, how is an emergency defined and who determines it? Alternatively, do democracies rely on existing constitutional provisions to address extreme conditions? At the statutory level, do they adopt a single, comprehensive disaster law, or do they create specific statutes for each type of emergency (e.g., epidemics, natural disasters, war, or terrorism)? On the institutional level, do they establish a single agency for managing all aspects of disaster response, or is the structure tailored to the type of disaster or response phases (e.g., preparedness, response, recovery)?

Each jurisdiction must address four interrelated dilemmas. The first concerns public policy: Is it better to designate a single agency for disaster management, or to develop expertise within each agency to handle emergencies in its specific domain? The second dilemma relates to democratic theory: How does a democracy reconcile the need for consolidation of power in emergencies with the principle of separation of powers in normal times? The third dilemma concerns rights protection: How can individual rights be balanced with the necessity of emergency powers that may infringe upon them for the public good? The fourth dilemma is temporal: How can states act swiftly in emergencies while still ensuring legal oversight to prevent abuses of power?

These questions are crucial for identifying regulatory models or typologies for addressing extreme conditions. Such typologies can inform future research into their rationale, assumptions about legitimacy, and the conditions under which one model may be preferable over another. This could serve as a foundation for empirical studies on how different regimes perform in addressing emergencies.

The design of each country’s system reveals its approach to the relationship between law and extreme conditions: Does the law get suspended in times of crisis, allowing the state to act based on its inherent power, or is the extreme condition contained within the legal framework? Additionally, the content of laws addressing natural disasters, armed conflicts, and crises provides insight into how responsibility is allocated between the state, citizens, and non-governmental sectors during emergencies. These systems reveal deeper conceptions of sovereignty, particularly in moments when the state is called upon to fulfill its core function—managing extreme conditions.