The state of exception - a concept derived from the "exceptio" of the Roman legal system and which Agamben considers synonymous with the "state of emergency" - has today begun to transform, with our tolerance, into a "normal" mode of governance, which largely determines both the external and internal policies of states. The book by the leading Italian philosopher explores in depth the complex historical aspects of the issue, analyzes its causes and consequences in today's societies, and examines its "transformations" over time - from Hitler's death camps to Bush's Guantanamo prisons. When the state of exception tends to become the rule, the institutions and balances of democratic constitutions cannot function, and the very boundary between democracy and totalitarianism seems to be dissolved. Moving in a largely unmapped space between politics and law, between legal order and everyday life, a space that most historians and political scientists refuse to study, Agamben examines one by one the legal theories concerning the state of exception and sheds light on the dark relationship between violence and law in a substantive and radical way.