Page - 182 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

VULNERABLE182 sound directives seek to achieve: the direction of human conduct by those willing to do their part. The requirements of the Rule of Law are not exclusive to law in the normal situation, but are required by all rea- sonable attempts to guide human conduct by rules. Good members of a community are willing to do their part in patterns of collaboration, but such willingness requires directives that are apt to be followed. Departures from the Rule of Law, no matter their justification, may frustrate the capacity of the community’s members to assist in efforts to respond to the emergency situation. Indeed, given the need to settle a pattern of coordination to address the COVID-19 pandemic, depar- tures from the Rule of Law may frustrate the community’s ability to achieve coordinated action and so frustrate the community’s pursuit of its various health, economic, and other ends. Conclusion: Between Normal and Exceptional Even though forecasts for the COVID-19 pandemic range from the medium to long term, there is every reason to resist concluding that extraordinary powers are a “new normal.”15 The emergency situation contemplated by a well-formed legal system is often contrasted with the normal situation in terms analogous to night and day. Yet, like dusk and dawn, there are situations that are neither quite normal nor exceptional. Despite this reality, the law vesting extraordinary powers may not anticipate such in-between situations. In situations that are between normal and exceptional, extraordi- nary powers may need to be maintained, but those with the responsi- bility to rule should seek to re-establish the normal legal order where and to the extent possible. The need for rapid decision-making may wane with time, thereby allowing the more considered and deliberate law-making process of the legislature to resume. In turn, even if the normal situation has not yet resumed such that those with extraordi- nary powers have not yet exhausted their commission, some aspects of their commission may now be spent so that the normal legal order may resume its place in part. Much here falls, as with so much in gov- ernment, to the sound exercise of authority by those with the duty to govern, a duty that recalls that all authority is for the benefit of those for whom the ruler has a responsibility to govern well. 15. For an argument along similar lines, but developed for a different purpose, see Giorgio Agamben, State  of  Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).