Human Rights Quarterly

We aim to complement the work of legal scholars by investigating the effects of constitutional provisions for states of emergency, on the respect for personal (or physical) integrity rights, in instances in which governments are confronted with domestic crises. Our findings show that such constitutional provisions have an important impact on governments’ propensities to abuse such rights. However, these impacts are not always what one might expect, and indeed, our findings suggest that following the recommendations of lawyers groups may actually have a damaging effect on human rights in many instances. * Linda Camp Keith is Professor of Political Science at Collin County Community College in Plano, Texas. Her current research interests are human rights and the rule of law. She has published articles on this topic in Political Research Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, and Judicature and co-authored articles in International Studies Quarterly. She has contributed chapters to three edited volumes. She has also co-authored articles on the US Supreme Court in American Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, and Social Science History. ** Steven C. Poe is Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of International Studies Quarterly. He recently co-edited a volume entitled Understanding Human Rights Violations: New Systematic Studies, with Sabine C. Carey (2004). Ordering of the authors’ names is alphabetical, indicating that the research was a team effort to which we contributed equally. We thank Sabine Carey, Sonia Cardenas, and Neal Tate for their helpful comments on a previous version of this paper and Mark Gibney and Michael Stohl who have generously shared their data with us. Much of our data were gathered with the support of the National Science Foundation through Grant SBR-9321741 of the Division of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research. We thank NSF for its support while retaining responsibility for our opinions and any errors therein. Vol. 26 1072 HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY