Justitium

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Justitium

Justitium is a concept

Concept

A concept is a cognition unit of meaning— an abstraction idea or a mental symbol sometimes defined as a "unit of knowledge," built from other units which act as a concept's characteristics....
of Roman law

Roman law

Roman law is the law system of ancient Rome. As used in the West the term commonly refers to legal developments prior to the Roman/Byzantine state's adopting Greek language as its official language in the 7th century....
, equivalent to the declaration of the state of emergency

State of emergency

A state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend certain normal functions of government, alert citizens to alter their normal behaviors, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans....
. It was usually declared following a sovereign's death, during the troubled period of interregnum
Interregnum

An interregnum is a period of discontinuity of a government, organization, or social order. Archetypally, it was the period of time between the reign of one monarch and the next , and the concepts of interregnum and Regent therefore overlap....
, but also in case of invasions. However, in this last case, it was not as much the physical danger of invasion that justified the instauration of a state of exception, as the consequences that the news of the invasion had in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
- for example, justitium was proclaimed at the news of Hannibal's attacks.

According to Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben is an Italy philosophy who teaches at the University Iuav of Venice. He also teaches at the Coll?ge International de Philosophie in Paris, at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and previously taught at the University of Macerata and at the University of Verona, both in Italy....
, justitium progressively came to mean, after the Roman Republic

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the phase of the Ancient Rome characterized by a republican form of government; a period which began with the overthrow of the Roman Roman Kingdom, c....
, the public mourning of the sovereign: a sort of privatization or diversion of the danger threatening the polis
Polis

A polis -- plural: poleis --is a city, a city-state and also citizenship and body of citizens. When used to describe Classical Athens and its contemporaries, polis is often translated as "city-state."...
, as the sovereign claimed for himself the auctoritas
Auctoritas

Auctoritas is a Latin word and is the origin of English "authority." While historically its use in English was restricted to discussions of the political history of Rome, the beginning of Phenomenology philosophy in the twentieth century changed the use of the word substantially....
necessary to the rule of law.