English

Noun

raison d’état

1. A state interest, especially when invoked as politically superior to moral or even legal considerations.
   • 1975, Philip B. Kurland (editor), The Supreme Court and the Judicial Function:

     The law as created by the Supreme Court has been nay-saying in fact and in effect, stating in specific instances a series of "thou shalt nots." Not entirely, to be sure, as the cases illustrating raison d'état in American constitutional law tend to indicate, but enough to make the generalization valid.

   • 2012, Yale H. Ferguson, ‎R. J. Barry Jones, Political Space: Frontiers of Change and Governance in a Globalizing World, p. 173:

     These epochal shifts contributed to lend specificity to the substantive rationality of the state — raison d'etat.