Legislating for a pandemic: exposing the stateless State

Initially the subject of widespread consensus, legislative and policy responses to coronavirus are increasingly provoking predictable, albeit understandable, reactions. The right and the left are united by a concern that essential freedoms are being eroded by a State utilising the opportunity of the pandemic to make a power-grab. Focused on the Coronavirus Act 2020, this article takes a more cautious approach, suggesting instead that the law should be understood not as the product of a hierarchical State but rather as a demonstration of the ‘statelessness’ of the contemporary state. The article examines the Act, with particular focus on open justice, adult social care, and Business Improvement Districts. We argue that reading this unique piece of legislation through the lens of the stateless state reveals the complexities, ambiguities and contestations within contemporary policy making. We suggest that dismissing the Act as unnecessarily authoritarian is an insufficiently nuanced response, and furthermore, that this exploration of the law allows us to develop and complicate scholarship on the stateless state.