States of Exception in American History

Gary Gerstle is the Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge and the author of several books, including American Crucible and Liberty and Coercion. Joel Isaac is associate professor of social thought in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He is the author of In Working Knowledge and coeditor of The Worlds of American Intellectual History.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction Gary Gerstle and Joel IsaacPart One: The Challenge of Carl Schmitt1 What Is the State of Exception? Nomi Claire Lazar2 Negotiating the Rule of Law: Dilemmas of Security and Liberty Revisited Ewa Atanassow and Ira Katznelson3 Beyond the Exception David DyzenhausPart Two: The American Experience with Emergency Powers4 The American Law of Overruling Necessity: The Exceptional Origins of State Police Power William J. Novak5 To Save the Country: Reason and Necessity in Constitutional Emergencies John Fabian Witt6 Powers of War in Times of Peace: Emergency Powers in the United States after the End of the Civil War Gregory P. Downs7 Was There an American Concept of Emergency Powers? John Dewey, Carl Schmitt, and the Democratic Politics of Exception Stephen W. Sawyer8 Charles Merriam and the Search for Democratic Power After Sovereignty James T. Sparrow9 Constitutional Dictatorship in Twentieth-Century American Political Thought Joel IsaacPart Three: Broadening the Exception10 Frederick Douglass and Constitutional Emergency: An Homage to the Political Creativity of Abolitionist Activism Mariah Zeisberg11 Delegated Governance as a Structure of Exceptions Elisabeth S. Clemens12 Spaces of Exception in American History Gary Gerstle and Desmond KingAfterword Gary Gerstle and Joel IsaacContributorsIndex

"This collection of essays, edited by historians Gary Gerstle of the University of Cambridge and Joel Isaac of the University of Chicago, makes timely reading as America looks to repair its democracy from the constitutional ravages of the Trump era. This book is useful not just for gauging how far Trump may have strayed from the United States’ professed legal norms, but also for situating the past four years in a longer-term historical perspective. . . . richly rewarding."