ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on how judges deal with historic injustice. It argues that judging history reveals three types of temporality: a new regime of historicity, a new era for institutions, and an ability to make the past present. Justice, legal certainty and expediency are three values of law that are central to what both lawyers and non-lawyers seem to regard as essential to law. The book indicates that social acceleration has serious consequences for the temporality of law. It looks into the temporal dimensions of the state of exception, with special regard to Carl Schmitt's theory. The book presents a systems theory approach which deals with collective memory and symbolic temporalization in constitutional law. It elaborates the temporal dynamics immanent to the contemporary regime of global health security. The book investigates the power to perform factual actions in times of emergency.
