Emergencies Vary in Intensity
The executive and the legislature certainly appear to think in terms of a scale of intensity when they declare emergencies. We might, perhaps, project our listing from the shadow land verging upon or falling just short of emergency. A Presidential Proclamation of 1934 speaks of regulations justified by the existence of “exceptional and exigent circumstances.”[57] The Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 uses the terms extraordinary and emergency interchangeably, speaking of expenditure of unaudited funds “for objects of a confidential, extraordinary, or emergency nature.”[58] The simple declaration “that a national emergency exists,”[59] contained in the President’s September 8, 1939 Proclamation of a neutrality emergency, will serve as well as any other enactment as a characteristic example of the scale of intensity necessary to declare a national emergency.
Beyond this intensity of emergency, Congress has addressed itself to “distressed” emergencies,[60] “serious” emergencies,[61] “intensified” emergencies,[62] “unprecedented” emergencies,[63] “acute” emergencies,[64] and at the outer extreme, “unlimited” emergencies.[65]