Disaster Law Commons^™

The Emergency Next Time, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article offers a new conceptual framework to understand the connection between law and violence in emergencies. It is by now well-established that governments often commit state violence in times of national security crisis by implementing excessive emergency measures. The Article calls this type of legal violence “Emergency-Affirming Violence.” But Emergency Violence can also be committed through governmental non-action. This type of violence, which this Article calls, “Emergency-Denying Violence,” has manifested in the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Article offers a taxonomy to better understand the phenomenon of Emergency Violence. Using 9/11 and COVID-19 as examples, the Article proposes …

When Protest Is The Disaster: Constitutional Implications Of State And Local Emergency Power, Karen Pita Loor

Faculty Scholarship

The President’s use of emergency authority has recently ignited concern among civil rights groups over national executive emergency power. However, state and local emergency authority can also be dangerous and deserves similar attention. This article demonstrates that, just as we watch over the national executive, we must be wary of and check on state and local executives — and their emergency management law enforcement actors — when they react in crisis mode. This paper exposes and critiques state executives’ use of emergency power and emergency management mechanisms to suppress grassroots political activity and suggests avenues to counter that abuse. I …

Manufactured Emergencies, Robert Tsai

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Emergencies are presumed to be unusual affairs, but the United States has been in one state of emergency or another for the last forty years. That is a problem. The erosion of democratic norms has led to not simply the collapse of the traditional conceptual boundary between ordinary rule and emergency governance, but also the emergence of an even graver problem: the manufactured crisis. In an age characterized by extreme partisanship, institutional gridlock, and technological manipulation of information, it has become exceedingly easy and far more tempting for a President to invoke extraordinary power by ginning up exigencies. To reduce …

The Preparedness Piñata: Knocking Out The Problems In Texas's Emergency Management Legal Framework To Enhance Performance At The Local Level, William S. Gribble

Student Scholarship

Texas has a very comprehensive emergency management program that should be the envy of every state in the union. However, the manner in which we as a profession have achieved this may have inadvertently circumvented the proper administrative law procedures required in Texas. This has likely caused Texas to accidently engage in ad hoc rulemaking that--if left as is--could set the conditions to create a damaging friction between the state and municipal governments. That friction would erode the interoperability necessary to protect property and to save lives during a disaster. This Article provides: (1) a brief history of the development …

Under Containment: Preempting State Ebola Quarantine Regulations, Eang L. Ngov

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.