Emergency, as a generic term applicable to individual and group situations as well as to the state, connotes the existence of conditions suddenly intensifying the degree of existing danger to life or well-being beyond that which is accepted as normal. (A standard dictionary definition mentions the element of surprise, which may be present but is by no means necessarily integral to the existence of an emergency. An intense threat to life or well-being is not necessarily lessened by anticipation.) An emergency requires extraordinary and prompt corrective action. A typical British recital of the proper objectives of emergency action inferrentially includes “... securing the public safety, the defense of the realm, the maintenance of public order and the efficient prosecution of any war in which His Majesty may be engaged, and ... maintaining supplies and services essential to the life of the community.”[55] Public disorder, war and threat of invasion, interruption of the production or flow of essential supplies and services--any of these may intensify danger to life or well-being beyond acceptable limits. A similarly broad definition is contained in the American Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947, the national emergency section of which permits the President to curb strike action which “if permitted to occur or to continue, [would] imperil the national health or safety.”[56] Implicit in these definitions are the elements of intensity, variety, and perception. Presumably when the point of normal tolerance of danger has been passed, it remains possible to measure the intensity of the danger according to some scale. Obviously there are varieties of emergency. A war emergency differs in some respects from an emergency caused by natural catastrophe or industrial unrest. Emergencies vary in their source or cause, and in their impact. Finally, before corrective action can be taken, someone in a position of authority must perceive the existence of the emergency. It would be idle to conduct an analysis of the problem of emergency in the constitutional state without first determining the range of situations which have been recognized by democratic legislatures and executives to constitute emergencies--_i.e._, to warrant exceptionally quick, vigorous, and possibly novel action. When the legislature enacts a standby statute, instead of itself proclaiming an emergency, to whom does it entrust the power to determine the existence of an emergency, and within what limits? What are the powers which democratic legislatures grant the executive branch, enabling it to so order individual and group behavior as, in the first instance, to avoid intensification of the threat to the life or well-being of community and state, and ultimately restore conditions to normal? Finally, what if any measures are prescribed for insuring responsible administration of such powers?