ABSTRACT
Since September 11th 2001, the ‘exception’ has become central to political discourse and practice. Many policymakers and commentators have sought to define 9/11 as an exceptional event that brought about an exceptional set of circumstances, which in turn both require and justify exceptional responses. As such, governments and their agents have unleashed huge levels of violence both domestically, against citizens and aliens it deems threatening, and externally, with seemingly global reach. It is possible to describe an extensive array of exceptional measures that have been legitimated and put in practice under claims about exceptional circumstances. This trend has been a particular feature of the political landscape in the UK, the US and the EU, made all the more notable as these are places that claim a liberal heritage. Much of this has consisted of a series of illiberal antiterrorism laws enacted, often quickly and with little opposition, under the aegis of urgency, necessity, emergency and exception, but many contemporary transformations have occurred outside and away from the field of law, instigated by executive fiat, changes in operational policy, and a generalized sentiment of exceptional legitimacy and mobilization not simply in government, but at multiple levels of governance, governmentality and public practice. Under the same series of claims about the rules of the game having changed, the US and UK have waged aggressive international war contrary to international law.1
