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20 Wash. U. Global Stud. L. Rev. 99 (2021)
The Age of Emergency

handle is hein.journals/wasglo20 and id is 105 raw text is: THE AGE OF EMERGENCY

CHRISTOPHER ROBERTS
ABSTRACT
This article argues that the period from 1914 to 1926 saw a dramatic
expansion in the development and dissemination of new forms of repressive
public order legality within the British Empire, in a manner that has had
enduring negative influence on legal orders around the world up to the
present day. The article begins with the wartime years, exploring the
innovations and extensions in repressive legality that took place both in
Britain and around the empire. It then turns to examine the effect of the
war's end, which, far from bringing the new repressive legal orders that
had been put in place to an end, saw them extended in order to attempt to
address political challenges to the status quo that came in the war's wake.
Along the way, the article highlights the close relationship between martial
and emergency law on the one hand and more regularized forms of
repression on the other. In addition, the article draws attention to the fact
that, however much the war may have provided a pretext, the repressive
legal orders that were adopted were primarily aimed at suppressing
movements fighting for greater rights and representation, be it in the form
of a more egalitarian polity at home, or colonial independence across the
imperial world. The article concludes with a brief exploration of some of
the many ongoing legacies of the repressive approaches to law developed
in the period across the former British colonial world.
Keywords: repressive legality, legal history, freedom of assembly,
freedom of association, freedom of expression, human rights, emergency
law, comparative law, transnational law, law and empire

99

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