Interesting post. When I saw the title, I wondered whether you were going to reference Agamben, and sure enough you did. There is one problem with Agamben’s analysis that I found when reading him. Agamben seems to think “law” is synonymous with “civil rights”. He speaks constantly of “law” suspended in the “state of exception” but what he refers to are things like due process in some instances, particular liberties, and the like. He clearly does not seem to think that divorce law, bankruptcy law, the laws of wills, estates, trusts or contracts or torts are suspended. Thus his constant invoking of legal theorists in speaking of Law with a capital L as being the entity that is suspended in the “state of exception” is a bit strange. (i.e., he seems to think he is making an ambitious claim about how Law is rendered invisible in this state of exception, but all he seems to be saying is that a *part of it* can be). Is this such a radical notion?