Constitutional Breakdowns in Revolutionary Outbreaks: A Legal Analysis and Political Reinterpretation of Mubarak’s Fall

It is not self-evident to associate revolution with law. The disruption of political order that usually underlies revolutionary outbreaks is thought to affect legal rules so that they are no longer orienting actors. However, if law might be a source of constraints, ontologically it is more surely a discursive register tied to a state’s legitimacy. When the state’s control is at stake, as in a revolutionary situation, one can therefore understand that actors pay attention to the legal significance of their actions. The article will draw on this to analyze the Egyptian army’s arrival to power and Mubarak’s departure during the Revolution of 25 January 2011. By framing their acts as ruptures with constitutional legality (constitutional breakdowns), the article will suggest a richer and more nuanced narrative to the one commonly put forth by the literature. It will point to institutional strategies likely underpinning both actors’ decisions and show that the army’s initial intervention and Mubarak’s resignation might have been less definitive at the time. It will also suggest new ways to think about the relation between law and revolutionary politics. By drawing notably on an understanding of law as a system of meaning from which actors make sense of events and act on them, it will show that legal studies can shed light on revolutionary moments beyond the issue of revolutionary processes’ institutionalization.