This chapter explains the notion of the rule of law which Victorian jurists associated with the English constitution. It examines the role of habeas corpus in securing personal liberty, and explains the debates over martial law which followed the Jamaica revolt of 1865, in which common lawyers sought to subject emergency rule to the rule of law. Despite this strong commitment to the rule of law at home, British rulers in the empire regularly introduced emergency regimes or detained political prisoners through ad hominem legislation, as was done in 1877 in the case of Abdullah, Sultan of Perak. Whereas in India, general legislation was passed to allow the detention of political prisoners and the introduction of martial law, in most of Africa, the colonial authorities used either specially enacted ad hominem ordinances or uncodified martial law powers. This was done even in East Africa, when Mwanga of Buganda and Kabagera of Bunyoro were detained and deported, even though legislation following Indian forms had been passed there. This chapter considers questions raised by the use of such emergency legislation for British perceptions of and fidelity to the rule of law.

The world responded in many different ways to the coronavirus epidemic. Why is that? Three obvious solutions present themselves: different understandings of the nature of the disease and how to tackle it, the nature of the political system in each nation, the history of how pandemics had been dealt with in the past in each country. Upon inspection, none of these explanations seems to work. The scientific understanding of the disease and its means of spreading were broadly similar in all nations. Only at the margins did unorthodox theories hold sway. Most nations claimed to be following expert advice, but what the experts advised differed. Politicians could pick and choose among the counsels they received. Both democracies and autocracies tried each of the three possible approaches to the pandemic, targeted quarantine, broad lockdown, or a hands-off approach. And nations did not obviously follow the tactics they had used in previous epidemics. The heavy hand of past public health interventions, with the state compelling citizens to follow behavioral prescriptions, was harder to implement today.

When does a ‘transition’ stop being a transition and simply become an indefinite status quo? When does time – and the lexicon in which it is invoked – bend itself to politics and its enactors? And how do such innovations effect daily lived experiences of human (in)security? This chapter endeavours to contribute to an understanding of the temporal limbo of Bosnia and Herzegovina after the conflicts of the 1990s and the ways in which these temporal renderings fall out of sync with ideas of everyday justice. It queries whether an international and state-orchestrated acceptance of an indefinite state of exception has recognized what justice might mean on the ground and whether the current ‘enduring transition’ can actually countenance the harms of the past in a meaningful way that might preclude their repeat. It aspires to recognize cultural repertoires that attempt to voice what everyday justice might look like, even as it critically examines how easily such moments of hope – temporal ruptures and interrogations of dominant time narratives – are stifled.