Living in a state of emergency became Egyptians’ new normal, Nathan J. Brown and Mai El-Sadany write for The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog. The piece discusses the merits of imposing the state of emergency nationwide most recently. They say that “by significantly expanding the powers of a judicial tool meant only to serve ‘emergency’ purposes, Egyptian authorities … limit the influence of the ordinary court system, instead focusing their efforts on creating a parallel judicial process that is guaranteed to dole out verdicts in the security state’s favor. With the state of emergency allowing authorities a number of other powers that complement these developments, including the interception of personal communications, the censorship of public speech, and the sidestepping of due process, the state of emergency in Egypt is the new normal — or rather, the old normal brought not merely back to life, but up to date.”

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