ABSTRACT
History can be used or abused. Three oft-cited historical episodes of emergency provisions – the Roman dictatorship, the French 'state of siege' and Article 48 of the German Weimar Republic – offer some very instructive lessons, if approached with these considerations in mind. Britain has been portrayed as a bulwark of the 'rule of law', most notably by Dicey. But its history, including that of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, has been characterised by the repeated adoption of emergency powers. The American Revolution of 1776 was necessary for the formation of the United States, which was to replace the United Kingdom as the ascendant capitalist power in the twentieth century. During wars, major industrial struggles and political crises, extraordinary measures have also been imposed in other so-called advanced democracies with British-derived legal systems, notably in Canada and New Zealand, with the willing assistance of the courts.
