Publications
This article pins down the transformative potential of emergency and offers a detailed example on how emergency
reshapes a constitutional order. Furthermore, published in a European law journal, it seeks to
bridge between past and present concerns about the status of liberal constitutionalism.
C Cercel, The Interwar State of Siege: Law, Politics, and the Military Between Europe’s Centre and Periphery (Routledge, 2026)
This book is currently a work in progress under contract with Routledge for the Nomos Series in Law, Culture and Power.
This sole-authored monograph will provide a theory of the state of siege grounded in the historical experience of the interwar era. It also seeks to reflect on its relevance and its legacy for a legal and political present marked by multiple crises. Core to this endeavour is an effort to grasp and assess critically the intellectual, political and legal historical background marking the circulation and operation of this legal institution both within the European centre and at the periphery.
The book thus follows closely the theory and praxis of the state of siege from its incipient years during the French Revolution towards its apex in the mid-19th century. It analyses its reception in the Romanian context and its unbound use in the interwar era, as well as its intellectual and material relation to extreme ideologies such as fascism, communism, and right-wing authoritarianism. Furthermore, it critically assesses the impact this praxis has on constitutional safeguards and on the advent of authoritarian regimes before and during the Second World War (La Révolution Nationale in France, and the royal dictatorship, the National-Legionary State, and the military dictatorship in Romania). Finally, it examines the alteration of legality that the operation of the state of siege produces by bringing the law closer to ideologies of blood and soil.
Dessantis, 'Reviving the Past or Enduring Continuity: French Emergency Laws in Belgian Constitutional History' (2026) Law, Culture and the Humanities
This article primarily focuses on the survival or revival of the French concept of state of siege (état de siege) within the Belgian legal sphere. According to the reasoning of the drafters of the Belgian Constitution, this legal entity should have been abolished at the founding of the Belgian State. In practice, however, this proved not to be the case. Both jurisprudence and practical application show that the state of siege, with the army acting as enforcer of public order, remained a customary response to social unrest. Based on this observation, the article seeks to examine how the state of siege survived.
The central argument is that the state of siege was never formally repealed and survived as a pragmatic and ad hoc instrument, repeatedly invoked in times of crisis. Its continued use can be explained by three interconnected factors: (1) the fragmented nature of Belgian (military) legislation, (2) a culture of pragmatic (legal) continuity, and (3) a perception of social unrest as an existential threat to the political and social order. To support this argument, several case studies were analyzed in which the state of siege was used to manage social unrest, covering the period from 1831 to 1886.
The research draws on a broad range of primary sources: case-law, military doctrine, and archival materials, alongside extensive literature on military intervention in public order during the nineteenth century.