<p>In modern liberal democratic states ruled by laws, unforeseen extreme situations present an existential threat. Limited by the “inflexibility of laws”, the modern state of exception appears in response to situational conditions as a ‘remedial’ political instrument, released from the prescribed legal norms, and with the sole purpose of re-establishing normalcy. Theorist Giorgio Agamben identifies the law of <i>18 Fructidor</i> as the first occasion of a modern parliamentary legislative government “grant[ing] itself the right to put a city in a state of siege”. By following precedence set in the Roman Republic, the modern state of exception would be envisioned within ‘democratic-revolutionary tradition’ as a transfer of extraordinary power outside the government. The modern state of exception appears to have since developed based upon the medieval legal maxim <i>necessitas legem non habet</i>, allowing for government to act ‘extra juridically’. In following the development of the state of exception within France, from its proclaimed archetype until its contemporary form, this paper attempts to uncover its true origins. By contrasting parliamentary discussions from 1797, for the first time in English, against voices heard within the National Assembly of today, the difference in understanding the state of exception becomes all the more distinct.</p>