state of exception
state of exception noun: a condition in which ordinary laws or norms have been suspended by a political authority.
Noun
state of exception (plural states of exception)
- A condition in which ordinary laws or norms have been suspended by a political authority.
- Out of such rhetoric emerged an American state of exception, and with it, the disturbing outlines of inquisitorial behavior.2006, Arthur Versluis, The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism, page 127
- Regardless of how we conceive of them, rights are just abstract entitlements that, given a state of exception, can be suspended at will by the very same states that profess a belief in the universality and inalienability of these rights!2010, Flora Sapio, Sovereign Power and the Law in China, page 252
Forms of state of exception
| plural | states of exception |
|---|
Origin of state of exception
Calque of German Ausnahmezustand, primarily as used by the German jurist and philosopher Carl Schmitt; popularised in English by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben in the 1990s–2000s.
Questions about state of exception
- What does state of exception mean?
- State of exception means a condition in which ordinary laws or norms have been suspended by a political authority.
- What part of speech is state of exception?
- State of exception is a noun.
- What is the plural of state of exception?
- The plural of state of exception is states of exception.
Words near state of exception in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: state of exception (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “state of exception.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/state_of_exception. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.