Emergency Legislation

extraordinary or exceptional laws that become effective in a state of emergency and that give the government extraordinary powers, such as the right to establish legal norms the executive is ordinarily not entitled to establish and the right to suspend individual laws or certain of their norms, including constitutional guarantees. Emergency legislation is widely used by imperialist states to combat revolutionary and national liberation movements. It was employed to establish fascist regimes in Germany, Spain, and Portugal and the dictatorship of Pinochet’s military-fascist junta in Chile. In the 1950’s the Federal Republic of Germany passed a number of antidemocratic emergency laws directed against progressive forces; for example, the right to choose and practice a profession was limited, the right to strike was revoked, and freedom of movement was restricted.