The State of Exception Is a Zone of Enemy

The state of exception is akin to the Roman Ustisium, in which all legal determinations are deactivated. It also functions as a threshold of indeterminacy between democracy and absolutism. The only long-term checks on state power emerge from a civil society whose power is significant enough that the state fears it. They suggest that the only thing that preserves liberty in the long run is something called the Red Queen effect.