constitutions and codifications, 1667–2017 However, it did not stop there. There was the notorious terrorist attack in Norway on 22 July 2011, when a right-wing terrorist bombed a government building in Oslo and killed 8 people, and later the same day killed 70 young people and wounded scores more on a summer camp for the Labour party outside Oslo.23 This immense tragedy is not yet fully understood in Norway. My point here is to highlight the problematic constitutional situation. On the day it was known that violence had been done to the heart of Norwegian government, but the extent of the attack was unclear at first. In that moment, the constitutional principle of necessity was asserted, which immediately gave the Norwegian authorities the competence to exercise an extraordinary authority, since the authority of constitutional necessity arises ipso jure, without prior approval. As soon as one realizes that the actual situation does not satisfy the requirements for constitutional necessity, that authority ceases. That was the case on 22 July, since the authorities soon realized that the situation was limited – that the government was not in a control crisis. That is the reason the government has not used ‘constitutional necessity’ in its public vocabulary about 22 July. In the Human Rights Commission’s report published a few months later, on 19 December 2011, the government’s handling of the attack became an expression of the close relationship that seems to exist between nation and Constitution: This recent history brings out the complexity of the differences between the liberal constitution’s rule-of-law mechanisms (what we may call the obviousness of constitutional normality) and the fragility of this state of 23 Noregs offentlege utgreiingar (NOU, Official Norwegian Reports), NOU2012:14 Report of the 22 of July Commission (2012), www.regjeringen.no/en/dokumenter/nou-2012-14/id 697260/. 24 Ibid. 343 In order for the constitution and constitutional customary law to be set aside, the country must be thrown into a crisis, which threatens a greater part of the population, the basic structures of society or the kingdom’s existence. The political and popular handling of the terrorist attacks of 22nd of July 2011 also shows that the nation can deal with deeply tragic and shocking experiences without jeopardizing the constitution.24
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