ABSTRACT
Legal and political commentators discussed the programme in terms of the imposition of a ‘state of exception’, which allegedly overwhelms the ‘normality’ of law. The exception sanctions legal normality by suspending it whenever its institutional limits restrict the force of politics too much. In this sense, the state of exception acts like a Derridean ‘supplement’ to normal legality. A judicial rejection of the programme would place the relationship between the political and legal system under great strain. The legal argument, allegedly based on a ‘literal’ interpretation of the constitutional text, offers an interesting example of legal ideology. The majority of European legal systems disconnect Ministers’ prosecution from national Parliaments. The laws implementing the programme were dictated by the lenders and legislated by the Greek Parliament within strict time limits. The severity of the measures and the wholesale violation of constitutional procedural and substantive provisions meant that the programme would be eventually challenged in the Greek courts.
