In this panel, I seek to demonstrate a new dimension to understand literature and its connection to law. In the title of my paper, I refer to “state of exception’,“ an expression that lately has been overused. In my hunch, we may make out from a different perspective. To put it in more blunt terms: the “state of exception“ in literature in much more precise in details and description than the one pictured in law’s books. To support my assumption, I will introduce two authors that I am particularly familiar with their work: Franz Kafka and W.G. Sebald. One of the chiefly themes in Kafka is the authority. Sebald dedicated his writings to the engagement with the “neighbor.“ Both subjects are currently forgotten when jurists come across with the “state of exception.“ To wind up, I will link those lessons with the learnings from Walter Benjamin and his book “Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels,“ which deals straightforwardly with the matters of the state of exception.