Necessity and exception: rethinking the Belgian state of siege in World War I

Abstract This article takes a closer look at the creation of the Royal Decree of 11 October 1916, which regulated the state of war and the state of siege during World War I. It gave the government the power to restrict certain fundamental rights to such an extent that it effectively amounted to a suspension of those rights. It is notable that the Belgian Constitution prohibits this through Article 187 (formerly Article 130), which states that the Constitution can never, as a whole or partially, be suspended. Nevertheless, was the decree-law justified under the notion of necessity, without giving a proper explanation of what necessity actually meant? Using a socio-legal-historical approach, this article finds that necessity should be understood not only as a factual situation requiring certain measures to survive the war, but also in relation to specific (postwar) political objectives.