NCJ Number
230917
Date Published
2010
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This chapter explores the extent to which the criminal transformation of the Iraqi economy during and after the American invasion depended upon a "state of exception," which involved a state suspension of the rule of law under emergency conditions.
Abstract
This chapter argues that this approach sets a precedent for a new way of thinking about the structure of the legal power and the structure of state violence. It reveals how sovereign authority is constantly negotiating and reconstructing the boundaries of the law. In "State of Exception," Georgio Agamben (2005b) argues that throughout history governments have used a state of exception in suspending current law to impose a new force of law. A state of exception is a state of limbo that exists in a place somewhere between law and non-law. The power vested in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, along with the strategy it subsequently used, provides a clear example of a state of exception in action. If CPA officials were willfully ignoring their obligations under international law, as seems most likely, they did so in the knowledge that their government was fully committed to ensuring the legal impunity of its officials. What happened to the Iraqi economy in the immediate aftermath of the invasion was an attempt to establish a new set of commercial practices that would eradicate local control over the economy, decimate Iraqi industry, and precipitate a humanitarian crisis that is ongoing. This chapter argues that this resulted from the CPA's loyalty to the norms of the neo-liberal market, which promotes liberalized markets and "free" trade that facilitates bringing U.S. capital into an economy "open for business." 15 notes