Victor V. Ramraj is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore, where he also serves as Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs.

Review of the hardback: 'Combining a subtle appreciation of the complexities with brilliant insights into their resolution, together these essays form an important contribution and an intellectual feast.' Lucia Zedner, University of Oxford

• 1. No doctrine more pernicious? Emergencies and the limits of legality Victor V. Ramraj; Part I. Legality and Extralegality: 2. The compulsion of legality David Dyzenhaus; 3. Extralegality and the ethic of political responsibility Oren Gross; Part II. Conceptual and Normative Theories: 4. Emergency logic: prudence, morality, and the rule of law Terry Nardin; 5. Indefinite detention: rule by law or rule of law? R. Rueban Balasubramaniam; Part III. Political and Sociological Theories: 6. The political constitution of emergency powers: some conceptual issues Mark Tushnet; 7. A topography of emergency power Nomi Claire Lazar; 8. Law, terror and social movements: the repression-mobilisation nexus Colm Campbell; Part IV. Prospective Constraints on State Power: 9. Emergency strategies for prescriptive legal positivists: anti-terrorist law and legal theory Tom Campbell; 10. Ordinary laws for emergencies and democratic derogation from rights Kent Roach; 11. Presidentialism and emergency government William E. Scheuerman; Part V. Judicial Responses to Official Disobedience: 12. Necessity, torture and the rule of law A. P. Simester; 13. Deny everything: intelligence activities and the rule of law Simon Chesterman; Part VI. Post-Colonial and International Perspectives: 14. Exceptions, bare life and colonialism Johan Geertsema; 15. Struggle over legality in the midnight hour: governing the international state of emergency Kanishka Jayasuriya; 16. Inter arma silent leges? Black hole theories of the laws of war C. L. Lim.